Chapter 51 – Little Love Palace
December 16, 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:
51 – Little Love Palace
“Is that Flavia?”
“Yes? Ah. Hello up there. Miriam? How…? Ehh… I must have taken a wrong turn. How do I get back to the village?”
Miriam stands on a rickety scaffold she’s built againt the inner wall of the mystery shaft that has been both burned and flooded. Just a meter or so above the concrete at its base, she peers at the naked rock that is revealed at this height, scoring it with a knife. “Well, in a better world, you’d just take a lift right here, pop out right up at the top and skip down to them. But no such luck. In this world you’ve got to go back out, take a left, and follow that left wall until you feel the tree’s litter under your feet. Then climb.”
“I am so excited. I have to tell Alonso.”
“Faith, seems like a long time since I heard those words. Weeks it feels like, since anyone has been excited. What is it?”
“I saved Plexity.”
“Well well well.” Miriam doesn’t know what to say. Nobody knows Alonso as well as her, and she’s pretty sure that he doesn’t yet consider it lost. Someone like Flavia using a phrase like that would make him defensive, make him distrust what she says next. But how to tell the prickly mathematician? Best to hear what else she has to say. “How?”
“I was working in the sub. With Triquet. Very nice. Very safe and productive, to be in a place with walls and doors again. And I was reviewing the profile for a large dataset with, well a kind of forbidden technology that Alonso says I shouldn’t use, but with it I noticed a growing structure in all the numbers. A kind of… Well. I am bad with the metaphors. It is a significant ordering of the data and it reveals a kind of meta-mechanism for the life here.”
“I see.”
But Flavia can tell Miriam doesn’t see. “No no no. This is what Plexity is all about. Mapping connections, yes? Well, at least that’s what we thought. But it might just be that the entire project is to reveal this one single process. It is… I mean… If it translates to the wider world we might have figured out an entire new dimension or process of life. It may answer so many questions.”
“Brilliant.” But in Miriam’s mind, these structures must be like hidden cratons in the mantle, only detectable with sophisticated seismic mapping. “So it’s like, what is it? A new molecule or, uh, metabolic pathway? I’m out of my depth here, love.”
“I have no idea. That is for Alonso and his geniuses to figure out. But no. Here is why it is important for us. So far, I’ve detected this kind of universal mathematical expression everywhere here. It is a signal that appears as soon as we put samples in any kind of context. Once the variables increase, we get this data signature. So. Having identified it, it was easy for me to create a, well a kind of compression algorithm. You know zip files? In your computer? How they are compressed so they have less data, but then you can un-compress them and they grow larger again? But for this, my new compression algorithm, well, it kind of packs much more of Plexity’s collections into a small space, and all that is really left is that new signal. It is the only tab hanging out. So then you get a whole series of these tabs, like millions and billions of them, and you are looking at vast amounts of data at a scale that we hadn’t even considered. And the dynamics, which are so important to Plexity, are preserved, and even revealed more clearly.”
“I have no idea what you mean, except that when you said that nothing is sticking out except the tabs, I thought of the label on a shirt. That’s kind of right, isn’t it? Shows where it was made, what it’s made from, eh?”
“Yes, sure. Billions of shirts.” Flavia doesn’t know how to extend that metaphor, nor does she care to try. “So anyway. Your husband will be very excited. I am not saying that we need to stop collecting, it’s that we probably already have a kind of working baseline of data and all the work we do now just refines the models and increases resolution. But it works, Miriam. Plexity works.”
“Cracker. He’ll be thrilled. So…” Miriam levers a fractured bit of peridotite into her collection bag. “What is it? The new dimension of life? If you had to guess.”
Flavia shrugs. “I have no idea. That is not my specialty at all. I just get paid to make the computers happy. What about you?”
“Beats me. The only thing that makes sense to me are rocks.”
Ξ
Maahjabeen has been paddling for a couple hours. And she wishes that it will never end. It’s a beautiful day, with a calm sea. Her pod of eleven? twelve? orcas dash ahead then circle back, leading the kayaks around the island counter-clockwise. Pradeep is right on her flank, Aziz cutting through the green water with ease, his huge smile responding to her brief glance.
“Hungry?” he calls out, fishing in a pocket for an energy bar.
“Starving.” But Maahjabeen doesn’t slacken her pace. “But the orcas are leading us somewhere. I’ll eat when we get there.”
Pradeep puts the energy bar back in his pocket and takes up the paddle before he falls too far behind. She has such a strong stroke. And now she’s being carried away on the backs of cetaceans like a goddess of the sea. This is his beloved Maahjabeen in her element. He didn’t think he could love and admire her more. But he is so happy to be wrong.
“There. Look.” Maahjabeen turns back to him and uses her paddle to point ahead at the far northern horizon.
“Oh my god.” Pradeep finally clears the last point of the island’s eastern shoulder and sees the unbroken Pacific stretching to the north, turning gray at the horizon. It is the most profound sense of vastness that he has ever experienced. They really are the tiniest dot of terrestrial life on this great big water planet, aren’t they?
Now the orcas lead them past the unbroken cliffs of the east coast toward the north shore. Here, the currents get tricky, as a strong eastward swell tries to force them out into the open water. They have to paddle strongly at a corrective angle to make headway, their noses pointed nearly directly at shore. The orcas are patient, the currents seeming to not affect them, circling the laboring humans as they escape the current.
At one point, a juvenile orca rises silently beside Pradeep, blinking at him with a dark eye. It opens its toothed mouth like it’s greeting him, or laughing at him, and waves a pectoral fin. Is this what Maahjabeen meant when she said they spoke with her and welcomed her to their ocean? Pradeep bows his head. “Thank you. Uh. I am honored.”
The cliffs of the north shore are of a lighter gray, sharper and covered in darker trees. Pradeep frowns at them and shades his eyes from the glare to study the curve of their branches. “Is that…? I think it’s a whole forest of Sitka Spruce up there. Extraordinary. We didn’t even know they were here. Until now.”
“What, those trees?” Maahjabeen tries to share his enthusiasm. It is evidently important.
“Yes, that’s one of the main forest trees of the north. Oregon and Washington, Canada and Alaska. It’s all Sitka and Douglas Fir. But on this island we’ve now seen Sitka and firs and pines and even redwoods. All together. There is nowhere else on earth where these trees grow together. Sitkas aren’t found as far south as California and redwoods aren’t found as far north as Oregon. This is a dendrologist’s fairy tale. Amazing.”
“Okay, yes, Mahbub. Now I am very hungry.” Maahjabeen allows Pradeep to hand her an energy bar. She tears at it with sharp teeth under the gaze of the orcas. She figures they must approve, yes? They love to fasten their teeth in their prey and pull it apart. But maybe they’re disappointed in the lack of blood.
Fingers of gray rock break up the sea, leading to a ragged series of ridges descending from the island’s spine to the water. The orcas lead them between two of the wider fingers, which eventually curl into a tiny protected harbor, hardly large enough for the orcas and the boats to fit in. The orcas cycle in and out, cackling and blowing their blowholes, slapping their fins on the water. Their antics echo up the forbidding faces of the cliffs. This goes on for minutes.
Finally, the orcas all file out of the little harbor. But when Maahjabeen tries to follow them, their splendid matriarch stops and rolls on her side, chattering at the woman in the kayak.
“What is she trying to say?” Pradeep calls out.
“She say,” a hoary old voice from the cliff behind him answers, “you stay. Stay with old man.”
Pradeep yelps in surprise and backs his kayak around. There he is, a decrepit figure at the water’s edge. What in the world? Where did he come from? Perched at the base of the vertical cliffs, it is unclear how the man got there. At his age it’s unclear how he gets anywhere. A great mass of gray curls sits atop his dark and drawn face. His eyes are clouded orbs staring sightlessly over Pradeep’s head. He’s blind too?
Maahjabeen silently paddles up beside Pradeep. They regard the old man together. After a series of urgent glances and shrugs and glares, she ventures to say, “Thank you. Very nice to, uh, meet you. Is this your home?”
The man cocks his head upon hearing Maahjabeen’s voice. “A woman. Aahh.” A groan of pleasure rattles in his throat. “Yes. Home. Last home. Come.”
The old man makes no move. “Come…?” Pradeep echoes. “Come where?”
“Come. Come.” The old man waves them forward. The waves here lap harmlessly against the stone, tamed by the curving fingers of rock. So they can easily paddle right up alongside the spot he perches. As they near they can see the hidden notch behind him. He must have emerged from it.
“The orcas. They knew he was here,” Maahjabeen breathes. “They called to him with their noise. Then he came.”
“Yes. Kéet. Black and white whale. Kéet know my name. Come.” The old man uncoils long limbs and stands. He is taller than nearly every other Lisican they’ve seen, with a spidery gray goatee depending from his pointed chin.
Something in his hair stirs. Eyes blink. There is a fox hidden in there, under the dreadlocks. It blinks rheumy eyes at them.
“What in the world…?” Pradeep paddles close and grabs an outcrop. This won’t be easy but he should be able to haul himself up onto the rock shelf without getting too wet or damaging Aziz.
“What in… the world…” The old man mimics Pradeep, stretching his mouth around the words. “Old language. Enga-lish. Forget, uh, most. Most not all. Understand?”
But Pradeep is busy with his efforts. “Hold on to me, babi?” he asks Maahjabeen, using the stability she provides to slip out and clamber onto the rocks. Then he lifts Aziz, finding no room for the boat anywhere here. He stands the big blue craft endwise, leaning it against the cliff, so he can help Maahjabeen out of Firewater. Then they lean the second boat beside the first.
“I don’t like that.” Maahjabeen frowns at the kayaks.
“Very precarious, yes.” Pradeep casts about for rocks. He finds several long dried strands of bull kelp that nearly do a good job of lashing the hulls together. But they won’t actually tie into a knot. More rocks help, pinning the tubes of seaweed down.
By the time they finish securing the kayaks, the old man is gone. They examine the fissure behind him. Yes, quite narrow, but cut upward at an angle in the fractured cliff face.
The passage never encloses them. It always remains open to the sky, just a deep cut zig-zagging its way deeper into the cliff. It ends in a tiny pocket of a valley, surrounded by thin streamer waterfalls and flowering trees.
A rude hut, only a meter in height, rests against the bare wall of a cliff. It is a filthy little hovel, perhaps the best a blind old man could do. He sits before it, cross-legged, waiting for them. He eats the green rind of an unripe fruit, revealing stained black and brown teeth. Maahjabeen grips Pradeep’s arm as they stand uncertainly before him. “Why?” Maahjabeen asks. “Why did the black and white whales bring us to you?”
But the old man just eats his fruit, grimacing at the bitterness.
“Is it to rescue you? Bring you back home? Which one is your home, anyway? Which village?”
“This home.” The old man indicates the hovel behind him.
“And you’re… doing okay?” Pradeep is unsure what he’s supposed to do here. “Survived the winter like this, did you?”
“On the north shore too,” Maahjabeen murmurs. “The storms must be fierce.”
“Storms bad here,” the old man agrees. “So bad nobody come. Leave all the nakée coast to Aan Eyagídi, human of the land.” He presses his hands against his hollow chest. The fox stirs around his neck, staring sullenly at the two intruders.
“Oh, you want to be here?” Pradeep frowns. “Alone. Is that your name? Ah-an Leen-giddy? Did I say it right?”
“No name. Title.”
“I see.” But Pradeep does not see. He wipes his hands on his shorts and shares a blank stare with Maahjabeen. She is even more out of her element than he is. “Well, since we’re here… Maybe we could give you a hand. Plant a garden. Uh. Build you a better house. You sure you don’t want to come back with us? See some of your people?”
“No people.”
“Right. So… Who…? I mean, what made you move? Did you used to have a… like a family somewhere?”
“No family. Storm doctor.”
Both Maahjabeen and Pradeep look to the sky. It is a ragged band of light high above, crowded on all sides by the towering cliffs. “Storm doctor…” Pradeep repeats, hoping that doing so will peel back a layer or two of confusion.
“Who taught you English?” Maahjabeen asks.
The old man smiles to hear her voice again. “Ahh. Woman.”
They wait for more of an answer but none is forthcoming. Pradeep shrugs. “Maybe he’s kind of deaf as well as blind.”
“No deaf.”
“Oh. Oops. Apologies.”
They stand there in an awkward silence. The old man is patient, waiting for them in a sense. But for what? He knows why they’re here? “So what is it? There something you want to tell us?”
This makes the old man laugh. He lifts his hands and spreads them in an expansive gesture. “All. Tell all.”
“Grand.” But Pradeep isn’t sure it’s grand at all. This sounds like it will take quite a bit of time here. And the smell is already starting to get to him. “Well, let’s get started, Ah-an Leen-giddy. What do you most want to share?”
“Ehhh…” Now called upon, the old man casts about for words. “The sky. Crack open like egg. One, two, three time. Next after that, sky give birth.”
“Damn it, why does this always have to be so bloody esoteric?” Pradeep fights himself to silence after seeing the old man twitch in response to his irritation. “Sorry. It’s just… Why don’t any of you say, like, ‘Lisica has four hundred people. The capital is this village we call Ussiaxan. Our main industries are fishing and foraging.’ Like, what’s the demographics? The median income? Why can’t we just get the Wikipedia page for once? That’s all I’m asking. But okay. The sky cracks open one, two, three… Hey.” Pradeep thinks back to the artwork of the Milky Way in the cave. That was just this morning, although so much has happened since. “You mean you see the stars. The clouds crack open and you see the sky.”
“Clouds are eggshell. We are egg.”
“Oh, wow…” Pradeep falls back. “Lisica is… I mean, you hear that, babi? They believe they’re inside a gigantic egg and the whole island is just like waiting to be hatched. Fascinating.”
“Who taught you to speak to the whales?” Maahjabeen repeats her question but with a different subject, one more near to her heart. “And will you teach me?”
“Storm doctor. She teach me. I teach her. Yes.” The old man nods sagely at the empty air.
“Okay. I will teach you what I can.” Maahjabeen sits before him, trying to make herself comfortable. “What shall I teach?”
“English. She teach English.”
“If you like. Out of practice, eh?”
“First teacher.”
You’ve never had a teacher before? I’m your first?”
“No. She. She…”
“Ah. I think our new friend has trouble with past tense.” Pradeep sits beside Maahjabeen. “You had a teacher. A woman before. She taught you English?”
“Yes. Yes. She taughtet. Old language. When I am boy.”
“Oh, you learned English long ago? From a woman who…?”
“Yes. Miss Maureen. She my taught it.”
“Maureen Dowerd.” Pradeep sits up straight. “You knew her?”
“I think…” Maahjabeen reflects on this old man’s life. “Storm doctor… It’s like shaman, yes? Like, uh, what do we call them? Like Sherman. Well, that’s just our name for them. And Wetchie-ghuy.”
Now the old man’s face grows fearsome. A towering rage fills it and his hand shakes. He holds it out, pointed at Maahjabeen. “No Wetchie-ghuy. No. He is…” But the old man has no words.
“Wait.” Maahjabeen recalls Katrina’s words from her night with the village of the golden childs. “She said, she told us… There was an old shaman. And then Wetchie-ghuy like deposed him. Are you that shaman?”
The brittle fury in his eyes is all the answer they need.
“I see. That must have been… I mean…” Maahjabeen shares a wondering look with Pradeep. “It must have been like fifty years. Just how old are you, Aan? How long have you been here?”
He answers with a question of his own. “How many mothers? In Lisica?” Using the tip of his thumb, Aan Eyagídi indicates the interior of the island to the south. “How many now?”
“Ah. I know this.” Pradeep stirs, recalling what Jay told him of Kula and Jidadaa. “Fourteen. There have been fourteen mothers.”
“Four… teen…” The old man counts out the number on his fingers. “Yes?” He is so shaken his breath hardly makes words.
“Yes. Fourteen. Maybe fifteen by now. We haven’t met any young mothers ourselves yet but…”
Aan Eyagídi falls back against his lean-to with a despairing moan. The sudden weight tilts a wall of his hut and knocks it over.
The old man rolls away, then scrambles to his feet and, still moaning, wanders among the waterfalls, hands over his face.
“Is that what happened?” Pradeep asks Maahjabeen. “Wetchie-ghuy said he’d killed this old fellow but he’d really just locked him up in this little valley for ages, eh? And now we’ve ruined his house. Come on. Let’s see if we can help him…”
Pradeep bends to lift the fallen wall. The stench is really too much now. They should just completely disassemble this heap and like sanitize it before building him a better one.
Pradeep stops, holding a rough panel of bark. “Oh, dear.”
“What is it?” Maahjabeen appears at his shoulder, looking down at the ruins of the little hovel.
Within it is a corpse. It is a soldier of some Asian nation, his face sunken in death. He wears a torn suit of black coveralls and a molle harness filled with small attached sacks and bags.
The corpse’s hands are crossed upon his breast like a pharoah. But instead of holding an ankh, this figure lying in state grips in their withered hands a cell phone.
Ξ
“We must make a decision.” Alonso’s voice is a satisfying rumble. Even if he has lost control of this entire situation, it doesn’t sound like it. He still speaks with confidence. That’s something, isn’t it?
They all look to him for further direction. Mandy and Esquibel. Miriam. Flavia. Jay and Katrina. And Jidadaa, who brought them this latest crisis. Why did she have to arrive now, just as Flavia was lifting his Plexity hopes with her stubborn use of cellular automata? Now he can’t even focus on the import of her words until he resolves this latest crisis. “Jidadaa…” Alonso continues. “How can we be certain the entire Ussiaxan village is now empty?”
“They go. All go. Into night hunter hills. I watch. They scared.”
“And you think this is our only chance to retrieve our lost thirty thousand dollar drone?”
Katrina and Mandy exchange a glance. “Well, that and, well, I was really thinking more about that cottage in the woods, mate. I mean, we can get the drone back, yeh, although I’m fairly certain that it’ll be broken beyond anything we can fix here. But that cottage. It’s where the Dandawu says all their treasures are kept. Jidadaa is sure of it. If we can sneak in there for a quick peek…”
“Must hurry.” Jidadaa looks from one to the other. “Ussiaxan people come back with shadow. Hide from sun today. Very scared. But with night they come back.”
“Are we really doing this?” Alonso looks soberly from one resolute face to the next. These weeks have transformed them all, hardened them, given them direction to their lives that is not so easy to surrender, even against spearpoints. “If they find any of us there they will kill us, yes?”
“Take you koox̱.” Jidadaa shrugs. “Maybe die.”
“Slavery or death. No thank you.” Flavia shakes her head. “My plan over the next eight days is to rework the Plexity data instead, as Alonso has agreed. I think, what I heard, is a tacit admission from him that we may want to depend less on a classic binary codebase? That we may be open to more experimental…?”
“I said what I said,” Alonso grouses. “Send your harmonics through the data and let me know what you discover. I am not ready to grant you any more than that at this moment.”
Flavia laughs wickedly and claps her hands. “Oh, you will not need to grant me anything at all. It is the data, signore dottore, who will show you. Ha. So count me out of your suicide mission. Go ruin your lives without me.”
“Thanks.” Katrina makes a face. “Feel like this is mine to do. I’m the one who lost the drone. I’m the one who talked with the Dandawu about the treasure house. Nobody else has to come.”
“If it is anyone’s mission, it is mine.” Esquibel looks steadily at the ground, unwilling to meet any of their gazes. She has not been able to properly present her mission with the Japanese agent after it was recklessly revealed by Mandy and Alonso at the beginning of this meeting. It had been a very ugly scene and now they trust her even less. It is all a tremendous mess, especially with the loss of the drone and the evacuation of the enemy village. “I will slip in and out, correct our mistakes, gather the drone—”
“By correcting the mistakes do you mean actually handing the Plexity data to the Japanese?” Alonso’s question is quiet.
Esquibel spreads her hands. “Those are my orders. I am a naval officer. There is no option here. I must follow those orders.”
“Well, can we give them an earlier version of it, perhaps?” Flavia opens up a folder of backups on her laptop. “I have a snapshot here from third April, when we were just getting started. We have barely any collections yet. Nothing for them to steal.”
“No.” Esquibel speaks haltingly, choosing her words with care. They don’t know she has already shared a version of Plexity from a full month past that. “There’s, uh, a strict agreement. If I don’t give them the entirety of Plexity, they’ll just come back for it.”
“Well then Flavia, perhaps you can insert a bit of self-destruct code,” Alonso asks, “so that it is only viable for like a week and then it eats itself, leaving nothing but—?”
Esquibel shoots to her feet, pleading with them. “Impossible! I am supposed to be establishing a long-lasting relationship here. Get in deep. Over years. I have to be trustworthy. I am sorry, Alonso, everyone. The American Defense Intelligence people are trying to develop me as an asset.”
Flavia laughs, bitter. “This is the impossible part now, Esquibel. Because you have told all of us and your cover is blown.”
“I told you nothing!” Esquibel hisses, losing her temper. “It was Katrina, putting clues together! Gah. You reckless civilians and your stupid plans ruined everything! Now I must depend upon the discretion of you all or I will be arrested or maybe killed. By the Americans or the Japanese or even the Kenyans. Understand? Once I am compromised, my entire life is basically over. I am already in too deep.”
“I am sorry,” Alonso tells Esquibel, “but I cannot play a part in this. It is Plexity. It is too precious to steal.”
“You knew the risks, Doctor Daine.” Flavia doesn’t even look up from her laptop. “I do not have any sympathy for you. I have been a victim of corporate espionage before. A whole year of my life wasted. It is why I got back into academia. Now you will do it to me again? No.”
Esquibel is devastated. Here is the bill coming due. She knew that she was playing a dangerous game, certainly, but she was only motivated to save those she loves. But now she can see that her loved ones will not do the favor of reciprocating any of the trust and support she has given them. They truly are the most spoiled and self-involved people she has ever known.
“I’ll go with you, Skeebee.” Mandy’s voice is soft but resolute. “I’ll keep you safe.”
Oh, this is an offer she had no right to hope for. Tears spring into Esquibel’s eyes. “You—you will…?” This is a miracle beyond imagining, that Mandy would forgive her and stand with her against all others. “Oh, Mandy G…”
“She had really bad student loans,” Mandy explains to the others. “Poor Esquibel was never given much choice, were you?”
Esquibel realizes her only hope is to beg for their forgiveness. “No. Again and again. I needed to make terrible choices to escape my past. And it has all led me here.”
“You will go to the village, and I hope you find your Japanese spy.” Alonso speaks with conviction, trying to fuse the separate strands of this scattered mess into a single line. “You will speak with them, and tell them what has happened. The truth. Tell them everything if you like. I don’t care. Just explain why they are not getting Plexity and why they must leave us alone. Beyond that, how the Japanese and the Americans handle it is not my concern. And, in the end, Doctor Daine, it is not yours any longer as well. You have been relieved of the responsibility of that decision. Tell them that and then, well, we let the cards fall where they may, yes?”
It is a solution Esquibel cannot accept, but she realizes it is the best offer she will get at the moment. She drops her head and meekly nods. “Yes.”
“I just can’t for the life of me figure out,” Miriam wonders, “what it is about Plexity that is making the Japanese of all people want it so bad?”
“My contact…” Esquibel figures there’s no harm in telling them this much. “He reached out to me before Alonso was even released from the gulag. Their recruitment of me started before Plexity did. It isn’t the specific data so much as how it compromises me and makes me theirs. This is the bridge I can’t ever cross back.”
“Yeh, I’m still going too.” Katrina stands, brushing her lap clean of crumbs. “Curiosity’s about to kill this cat. If I don’t ever get a peek inside that treasure house I’ll die unhappy. You say we’ve got til nightfall, Jidadaa? Like nine hours? And we need like what, four? That should be fine, shouldn’t it?”
“If you can even get across the creek.” Jay stands. “That’s why I’m coming too. I’m the only one who—”
“No,” Esquibel and Mandy say in unison.
“No,” Katrina echoes, a half beat behind.
“No no.” Alonso waves the idea away.
“Damn, people…” Jay shakes his head, sad. “I knew I wasn’t popular here but I am the only one who’s gotten across that creek. And it ain’t easy. What if I—?”
Miriam interrupts him. “No.”
But Jidadaa claps her hands. “Jay come! Me and Jay!”
“No. Not Jay. Just you, Jidadaa.” Esquibel pulls her by the wrist into the circle of four women. “Let’s have your boyfriend recover a bit from all his injuries first.”
Ξ
Jay has spent most of his life in solitude. He has his surfer buds, for sure, and a whole host of other friends and families spread across the world, but when he looks at his life in totality, he’s alone way more often than not. So he doesn’t need any of the others here at this camp. He’s perfectly fine all by himself. Fuck em.
Wandering the pines above pine camp, he realizes for the first time that they aren’t being patrolled any longer by the golden childs. In fact, he hasn’t seen a single pollen mask since the storm blew them off. Their season is indeed over.
What a trip. They’re on like some twenty-one year epicycle, only reappearing when the time is right. This is the mindset of big wave surfing, where sometimes years can pass before the conditions line up just right. You just got to keep your bag packed and schedule clear. “Keep your mind zen, bro.”
But he isn’t sure what zen gains him here this afternoon. Pradeep is gone again. Triquet is back in the sub. Now four more of them are about to dip. And Jay’s got a real bad feeling about that Ussiaxan village. His hand grips his left side, where one of their young hunters scored it. Why do any of them got to be so aggro? This is paradise. They got everything they need.
Pine camp below is peaceful. At the kitchen tables, Mandy is making them snacks for their mission, like it’s a family picnic. Esquibel is filling a huge black backpack with all kinds of shit. Like any amount of gear will help against sixty spearmen. They don’t know how fast those dudes move! How intent they are on running these outsiders through…
Crazy how this narrow band of water can so completely divide two sides of the same family here. They really let their fights get in their way, didn’t they? They could be one big happy laughing tribe here on the meadow but no. Fools always got to wreck it. They tell their whack stories. Sing their songs…
No. No songs here. They write those prophet poems. Jidadaa said there’s like seventeen of them on the island. Some bad and some good. It’s time for him to hear these poems, Jay is pretty sure. If he’s being forced to choose between the Lisicans, then he’ll like bro down with the nicer ones and throw down with the others. Damn. That’s a nice refrain. Too bad they don’t have music here. Jay could… “Heh.” The idea pops fully-formed into his brain. “Write my own prophet poem. Make my own destiny. Bro down with the best. Throw down with the rest. Heh.”
He starts idly beatboxing, wandering through the grove. These are mostly Shore Pine and Monterey Pine but there’s some real beautiful Sugar Pines mixed in here. Such a weird and unique coniferous amalgamation.
“It’s all about the birds. Yeah. Yeah.
I said it’s all about the words. I’m spitting.
And it’s all about the trees. I’m seeing.
How they got across the seas. I’m saying.
“Now here’s a little tale about a storm and a bird and a seed
And how one carried the other to a land he’d never seen.
This bird he carried a seed from a pine he’d been eating
and when he dropped a deuce on the island he started seeding
it with pines and firs and brambly burrs from across the world
and his brothers and the others flew in to meet some girls
and that’s how their song got all mixed up together,
they never would have found each other if it wasn’t for bad weather.
And now that they’re here getting weird dropping deuces,
they found that the ground gives them options so he chooses
to stay, never fly away, live out his days on the cliffs with his eggs
and the partner he has claimed in a monogamous marital state.”
But his song, never long, now starts to always go wrong,
and his little bird brain can’t explain how he doesn’t belong
to all the tribalism and hate and whack shit they create
here in the land of plenty, where birds eat rich and wreck their fate.
It’s the song that you sing, the way you think about everything
that keeps you from having the wind beneath your wings,
it’s the poem you write, mad prophets with spite
that fills you with the envy that keeps you up at night.
“So we fighting for the future with our poems? I’m your teacher,
your lyricist and linguist, my lexicology I’ll feature.
You tell me that each part of this land is a verse?
Then you tell me who’s good and which one of them’s worse?
And you want me to cap one and take him off in a hearse?
And skin his ass and bring him right back as a purse?
And I say nay, no way, Wetchie-ghuy, just go away.
And Sherman, you’re vermin, let the fox finally catch you, and
these shamans need a lesson about the end of Rasputin.”
“It’s all about the birds. Yeah. Yeah.
I said it’s all about the words. I’m spitting.
And it’s all about the trees. I’m seeing.
How they got across the seas. I’m saying.
“Lisica lost me, you tossed me and broke me.
Took my health and my wealth, made my voice super croaky.
But I can still sing, which is better than what you got,
this prophet poem is flowing. Listen up. It’s my last shot.”
Jay passes deeper into the trees, just warming up. This is an epic rhyme. Homer ain’t got shit on him. The bars just keep dropping from his mouth like they’ve been waiting for him to discover them in there.
He passes into the gloom, birds taking wing when they hear his emphatic verses. Behind him, trailing enthralled, Jidadaa absorbs every word.
Ξ
Pradeep glides up onto the shallow rocky beach and pops out of the hull, dragging Aziz clear of the surf line. Ta da. That was neatly done. He turns back to Maahjabeen, still on the water, hoping she’d seen how deftly he moved after hours stuck in the boat. But her face is preoccupied, bruised with memory. Ah, right. She hasn’t seen this western beach since her ordeal with the first storm. Patience. His patience is what she will need here.
She pulls herself out of Firewater and totters up the beach, dragging her boat. “Bring them… higher…” Her voice is distracted, her stamina spent. Preying on her weakness, shards of trauma lance her, half-remembered black and gray images from those long deadly days. Hypothermia. Starvation. Hopelessness. She loses track of what she was saying, then finds it again. She shakes herself like a dog and stares at Pradeep, who watches her with concern. “Big sleeper waves here. At least, last time. Get them on this shelf.”
They carry the boats over the rough sand and lift them up the small bluff at the back of the beach. From here Pradeep sees the second bunker for the first time, hidden back in the trees. It is more dilapidated than he expected, a smaller building that is nothing more than maybe two-and-a-half concrete and timber walls stained green and brown. He picks his way toward it.
Now Pradeep feels the exhaustion. They’ve nearly paddled all the way around the island today. Something like twelve kilometers. Started at like five-thirty on the dial and gotten all the way around to nine o’clock. Just an epic amount of boating. When they’d left the old man, the orcas were gone and the current back to the east was impassable. So they’d surrendered to it and let it carry them around the island to the west, discovering on their way perhaps the largest prominence on the entire island, a bare peak looming above the northwest coast. Then they’d gotten into all those seastacks and finally, about an hour longer than he felt he could go, this beach.
“Do you think your housemates are still in there?” Pradeep turns to ask Maahjabeen. But she is back at the boats, making no move to join him. She watches the water instead, her face closed, arms crossed. He returns to her. “Ah, babi, what is it?”
“Not my favorite beach.” She leans her head against him.
“Understood. But I’m afraid we might need to spend another night on it. It’s getting late and I don’t think I can… I mean… How are you? What is your plan?”
“No plan. I just… miss the orcas.” Maahjabeen knows she has been part of some mythic day, and that it is drawing to a close. The currents had carried her out of their magical realm back to the ordinary, the cruel and ugly. The bunker with that broken femur poking into the air.
Pradeep kisses the top of her head. “Ah. Yes. That was magic. So I have to confess my weakness to you. I’m afraid my arms are about to fall off. I don’t think I can paddle all the way back to the sea cave without a break. That’s probably, what, another few hours? I’m not even totally sure where we are here.”
Maahjabeen lifts her hand and points down the coast to the south. “Down the coast is another maybe three kilometers to the lagoon and our first camp. That is all. But no. I can’t paddle any more. We need food. Do we have any? Maybe we can fish or find some shellfish. Can we make a fire?”
“Esquibel would say no. Maybe in the bunker?”
Maahjabeen shivers. “Ehhh. Maybe we can sleep on the beach?”
“Not in the bunker? Because of the bodies?”
She nods.
But he is intrigued by them. He turns back to the overgrown ruins, pulling out his phone. “Let me just take a quick peek.”
When Maahjabeen was here before it was the middle of a storm and she was preoccupied with her own survival. Now, with the care of a clinician, Pradeep enters the structure, recording a video. The gray light illuminates moss and lichen all over the walls, ferns growing from the top of rotten timber posts. Birds flit in the eaves above, nothing too large nearby that he can tell.
He steps over a fallen sapling and ducks through the narrow door. Quite a mean little space, no more than three meters by five. The windows were narrow. With a roof and another couple walls it must have been a dark little cramped bunker. Ah, there are the bodies, their uniforms the same color as the dead leaves covering them. Pradeep bends over them to do his examination.
Outside, Maahjabeen pulls packets of ramen from her dry bag. She doesn’t care what Esquibel thinks about a fire. She will never know they had one here. And dry wood is in abundance. The latest storms have brought a great amount of wreckage to the high tide line and it’s been enough time for the smaller pieces to dry.
Pradeep rejoins her as she’s making a hasty yurt out of the limbs and branches nearby. “That’s right, my babi,” he laughs. “We’ll build our own little love palace.”
Chapter 24 – On Fire
June 10, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the second 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:
24 – On Fire
“We couldn’t get anywhere close to the opening above. Jay said it was pretty choked with branches. All dead. Like somebody threw them in from above with the intention of stopping it up.”
“But there’s a platform? At the top?” Mandy’s knife has stopped chopping. She likes so much of what Amy is saying. Finally, a way up the cliffs to the spot of her dreams! This could be her own private access point, where she wouldn’t have to depend any more on Katrina and the drone or the goodwill of the Lisicans. She could build a proper weather station up there. If there’s enough room on the clifftops she could even set up camp…
Amy finishes washing and stacking the prep dishes. “I mean, after breakfast I can show you what I saw… Maybe someone has better binoculars. Maahjabeen’s look pretty beefy. Or we can fly the drone over it.”
“That’s totally what we should do.” But first Mandy needs to finish chopping the rehydrated mushrooms. The pan is already on and the oil is starting to sizzle. “Have I told you yet how much I adore you, Amy, for bringing mirin?”
“Don’t leave home without it!” Amy beams, happy someone appreciates the little things. She opens a tin of water chestnuts and adds their water to a boiling pot.
“Jay!” Mandy calls out. “Tell me!” He emerges from a cell, disheveled, his face still puffy with sleep. He only blinks at her. “The chimney! Filled with branches. Amy said you couldn’t climb it but what do you think: could someone smaller, like me?”
Jay stares at her, clearing his head. He slept so poorly. He’d never realized what a restless sleeper he is. But any time he had the impulse to switch positions or shift his legs he’d freeze up, afraid of waking Flavia. She’d been plastered against him all night, snoring like a sailor. Now his back is stiff and his hip doesn’t work right.
He needs some yoga before anyone hits him with complete sentences like this today. And this feels like a prime candidate for a wake and bake. Finally he collects his thoughts. “No way, dude. It’s totally stuffed. Nothing could get through bigger than one of those foxes I bet. They really did a number on it. I figure it must have been the villagers, bringing in logs and branches from topside and just dropping them in for years on end.”
“But I want to get to the top! The data, bro. Think of the data.”
Jay nods at her, recognizing a fellow scientist’s passion. “Yeah, you’d get heaps. Well. Uh. I don’t know. We could just 420 blaze it and start a fire at the base. Wouldn’t take long, I figure. It’s all old deadwood at this point. Be kinda cool. Anyway, can I steal a cup of hot water? My cottonmouth is gnarly.”
Mandy clears her cutting board, pushing all the ingredients into the pan. Amy drops wide noodles in the pot. Nice. This will be like a Pad Thai. If they only had fresh cilantro.
“Katrina. Darling.” Mandy sees her slim silhouette moving near the door. She wipes her hands on a dishtowel and hurries after her.
Katrina bestows a sweet smile on Mandy. “Morning, love.”
“I have a favor… I mean, what kind of battery life does the drone get? Could it do two trips today?”
“Not on a single charge.”
“Oh. That stinks. I want to check out this new spot. But I don’t want to lose a day of weather data. Hm.”
“But we do have two batteries.”
“Oh! Right.”
“Swap them out and away we go again. Where we going?”
“Amy found a platform on the cliff. Way up high. Sounds perfect for a permanent meteorology base.”
“Like… what kind of platform? Like a big bird nest or…?”
“She saw like actual boards.”
“Ooo. Sexy. Well let me just get cleaned up and then let’s get your station data. Then we can hunt for that platform.”
They meet on the beach a half hour later. Maahjabeen’s binoculars, 18×56 monsters that can cleanly resolve the top of the cliff, have little trouble finding the single pale board sticking out like a broken bone from the cliff face above. There is a brief flicker of white as a bird or animal crosses the lower left corner of Amy’s view, but it is instantly gone. She hands the glasses to Mandy and points, directing her gaze upward.
“Oh my god they’re so heavy. This is crazy. Where am I looking? Oh. There. Yeah, that’s a board. Woohoo! An actual board! See, Katrina? That’s where we’re headed.” She passes the binoculars on. Excitement bubbles in her and she hops up and down.
“Righteous.” Katrina fixes the spot in her mental map of the cliff as she removes the drone from its carrying case. She puts on the headset. “First, the weather station. Then the drone.”
The wind today is heavy and wet from the west. It smells like Kamchatka, mossy and ancient. The drone fights against its gusts. They drop Mandy’s little station to the beach and download its data. But before they return it to its spot above, they use the drone to investigate the platform first. If it’s ready, they can just drop the weather station on it until they can get better access.
To Mandy’s bitter disappointment the platform is unusable. The planks of what used to be a wide deck have been busted up and the few remaining intact boards are tilted at such an angle it would be impossible for the weather station to stand unaided. As is, this platform will provide no benefit over the spot they already have.
“Aw, sorry, Mandy. It was a good idea, though. And thanks again for that yummy breakfast. Probably our best one yet.” Katrina leads Amy back to camp. But Mandy stays where she is. It feels like black steam is rising in her, a mix of despair and fury. This defeat is harder to take than all the rest. Everyone around her is doing groundbreaking world-class science and she’s just marking windspeed and temps like a fucking college freshman.
She stares at the broken platform again. Ugh. And it’s in such an ideal location. That must be why the Air Force put it up there. A forward observation post or radio or weather platform, with like an unobstructed three-hundred degree view. Only a small ridge blocks the north, but that probably protects it from the worst weather too. Perfect.
Crap. Why does she always have to be the unlucky one?
Ξ
Triquet emerges from the sub deep in thought. They grasp a folder in careful hands. Without saying a word to anyone they cross through the bunker and pass outside into the camp. In this moment, Triquet’s mind is entirely blank. They still won’t let the magnitude of what they found impact them yet. They need to share it with Alonso first.
He’s sitting in his camp chair on the big platform, facing the sea. Alonso works on his laptop. Plexity is really up and running now and its founder is very pleased. Thanks to Katrina, the content can be accessed in a number of linear and non-linear ways. And he is gaining a new appreciation for Jay, who is collecting far more samples and specimens than everyone else combined. Amy is right. The boy has a gift.
But now someone needs his attention. “Yes, Triquet?”
“Do you have a moment, Alonso? Actually maybe more than a moment. It might actually be a lot of moments.”
“Yes? What is it?” Alonso scrolls through a column of bivalve findings, wondering how they can be presented in a more Plexity way, with more linking perhaps, between the salinity of the water and the calcium accumulations of the shells… The sharpness of Triquet’s eyes pricks at him again. “Yes, Triquet?”
“I’m sorry, Alonso. I just need your full attention for this. Please let me know when you can give it. I can wait.”
“Mierda.” Alonso sighs deeply to fight off his dark thoughts. Then he puts Plexity once again on a shelf and turns to Triquet.
Triquet’s eyes flicker upon regarding Alonso’s face. Wait. Who is this leonine godlike figure? The man is transformed from when he first got here. The beard is gone, the black and silver curls are now piled back, making his high forehead even higher. His eyes are dark and sharp and clear. “Whoa. Alonso. Look at you. You look great. Oh my god. You know who you look like?”
“Raúl Julia. Yes, it has been said to me…”
“No, that’s not it. Who is it…? I know! You look just like the dad from the Addams Family. Gomez Addams.”
“Yes! That is who I mean! That is Raúl Julia! There is no way that Triquet of all people doesn’t know the great Raúl Julia!”
Triquet drops the act, giggling and swatting Alonso’s arm. “Of course I do. Kiss of the Spider Woman is my favorite movie. I’m just fucking with you. And you do, you look like his cousin. Aw, I miss him. Definitely died too young. But no. Serious stuff now. You’re busy. Okay. I just made a bit of a discovery in the sub. Well, rather, I finally had time to take a closer look at some trash the Air Force left behind, and in the bottom of the bag I found a bunch of torn up black and white photos.”
“Torn up?” Alonso looks soberly at Triquet. “Ai mi. I’m not going to like the sound of this, am I?”
Triquet shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. It’s the truth. And that’s what we’re here to find, right? Whether it’s the interactions between bugs and plants or between people from long ago. It’s all the truth, regardless of what it means.”
“And what does it mean?”
Triquet presses their mouth into a thin line. They wish for a fleeting moment they were in a less garish fit during such a profound moment than the pink satin vest with sequins but it is what it is. They open the folder.
“This definitely took a few hours of puzzle work. And a couple of the pieces might be off…” The photo had been torn into tiny bits, then painstakingly put back together with scotch tape on the back. Its innumerable edges stick up like furred ridges. “But I think it’s pretty indisputable…”
Triquet must have worked intensely on this to rebuild it. Alonso shakes his head in wonder at the amount of work done and peers closely at what is shown him. In the photo, a woman with blonde curls holds a small Lisican child with blond curls on her lap. She smiles at the camera. The child fingers her chin. Alonso blinks. “Is that, uh…?”
“Maureen Dowerd. Yes. It’s got to be. And this is the center of the entire mystery. Right here.”
“And this mystery…?” Alonso pulls back. He doesn’t even want to touch the photo. He still sees this entire subject as a distraction. Why, it’s distracting him from Plexity right now.
But Triquet has another photo to share. This one is dark and blurred, the tears almost making it unidentifiable. Yet two faces can be seen, one dark and one pale. Kissing.
Alonso looks up with a grimace. “This feels so… I don’t know, Triquet, intrusive. Okay. So she had a Lisican lover. So what?”
Triquet spreads their hands across the photos. “She had a Lisican baby, Alonso. These were the final clues that had it all fall into place. It’s all proven now. The blonde curls. The betrayed child who became an old lady. This is the evidence. Photos they tore to pieces. I’m just glad they didn’t burn them. Think about it. It all makes sense now. Maureen Dowerd told them she’d be back some day but she never did because good-bye became known as betrayal after they killed her and buried her in the grove.”
“Wait. I missed something. Who did? Who killed her?”
Triquet falls silent. “Well, that’s what we still don’t know,” they finally manage. “But now we’ve got motive. Who knows? Jealous lover. Racist lieutenant. Maybe it was one of the Lisicans? We just don’t know. But now it’s time.”
“Time? Time for what?” Alonso rubs his forehead in irritation. He doesn’t like the sound of this. It has the sound of something that will even further delay his plans.
“Time to talk to the Lisicans about what they know. I’m going to put together a little presentation for them. Documents and photos. We’ll record the whole thing. See what they say then try to break down the translation later. This is big, Alonso. This is, like, potential criminal liability. There’s any number of scenarios here where the American military conducted some kind of violent mission against an undiscovered, unregistered native population. That’s an actual international crime. And for a very good reason.”
“Slow down. Slow down, Doctor…” Alonso holds up his hands. Ye gods, this crazy archaeologist is going to get his entire project shut down. “This is just conjecture so far. You don’t know any of that. It’s just an interpretation. Look in your hands. All you have is two photos of happy people.”
“I’ve got a body in a grave right over there, Alonso.”
“Absolutely. I’m not disputing that. It’s just…”
“Just what?” Triquet shares a troubled gaze with Alonso. This resistance is not at all what they expected. The old man needs to understand that this is a far more serious issue than he evidently does. Their careers could be at stake.
Alonso registers the fire in Triquet’s eyes and relents. He sighs again. “I guess I’m just thinking it’s so old. Sixty years. All these people are gone. Whatever statute of limitations…”
“She’s still alive, Alonso!” Triquet points at the cliffs, indicating the crone in the village. They wish their voice hadn’t come out so shrill. Being accused of hysterics would help nothing. But Triquet is invested in this story now. They need justice for the memory of Maureen Dowerd and the plight of the long-suffering Lisicans. At least until evidence appears that contradicts this scenario, that is. “And telling an archaeologist that sixty years is too long ago is like telling you that opera sounds like nursery rhymes.”
Alonso lifts a hand. This is outside the scope of… of whatever he is capable of dealing with at the moment. Restless irritation shivers through him. “Fine. That is fine. You know, I have already delegated the investigation of this—this issue to you and Doctor Daine. Please discuss it with her.”
Triquet can’t believe Alonso is so cavalier about this island’s dark past. Does he just not appreciate history? How can a scientist operate like that? Triquet has the archaeologist’s deep conviction that without knowing the past we cannot know ourselves. Does Alonso not want to know himself? Well, after all he’s been through lately, maybe not.
Triquet nods, looking away. “Yes. Well. Fine. We will write a report and present our findings shortly.” Their voice is prim and professional. But Alonso doesn’t take note. He is already back at work on Plexity.
Triquet leaves him and finds Miriam instead. She is in the bunker at a workstation collating contextual data that will allow her mineral surveys to be uploaded into Plexity.
Triquet’s gravity makes her turn and make space on the cooler she sits on. Triquet sits beside her. Miriam’s eyes fall to the folder.
Triquet realizes how much easier this is going to be. Without a word, they take out the first picture of Maureen Dowerd and the child, then the second of the two people kissing.
Miriam looks at them for a long moment. “Blonde curls.”
Triquet sighs. “Exactly. I tried to tell Alonso but he didn’t have time for it. What is wrong with him? He’s still in denial about how important the Lisicans are to this entire project.”
“He is worried about time, that’s all.”
“Why is he worried about anything? Shouldn’t he be happy now? I thought they all dragged him down into the Captain’s quarters for a Molly orgy. What happened with that?”
“They said he cried for five hours and then fell asleep. There is just too much in there for it to all be healed in one session. Katrina said he has a lot more crying to do.”
“I guess it made him crabby.” Triquet sits back. “That’s what I get for proposing something new and difficult the day after a big binge. Well. Here’s my plan: I’m going to return to the village. I need to talk to them about what they know. But I can’t go alone. Will you come with me?”
“Now?”
“No, I need to… Well, I’m putting together a powerpoint for those folks first. So, like, after lunch?”
“A powerpoint? For the Lisicans? Who else are you bringing?”
“Well. Not Flavia. And not Amy, that’s for sure. And I guess not Alonso. Anyone else is welcome to join. Katrina is probably a good choice. Not too many of us…”
“Will I get a chance to do any fieldwork while I’m there?”
“Uh. Yeah, I guess that’s what we’re all doing. I guess so.”
“Splendid. I’ll bring my best samples and see if they can tell me anything about them. Maybe where I might find more.”
Ξ
Pradeep runs his fingers along Maahjabeen’s skin, from the curve of her bare hip down to her knee. Her skin is so indescribably soft. He can’t stop touching it. But his touch doesn’t seem to be making her happy. Now that he is growing used to making love with her and starting to take more chances, she is suddenly twitching away from the contact like a cat.
“What is it?” His voice echoes in the sea cave, in the silence between waves splashing the rocks. They lie on a blanket on a rock shelf near the entrance. The two kayaks are out of the water and all evidence of them is out of sight-lines from any who might enter the sea cave from the inland tunnel. They are hidden. Private. And yet she pulls away. “Should I not…?” Pradeep lets his hand fall.
Her brows pinch in frustration. She grabs his hand. “No. It’s not that. I mean… I just find this all very weird. All this… this gentle focus on my body. It’s just a body. No need for hesitation. And all these questions. I never had a lover like you before. Like, I’ve read in books about boys who don’t manhandle women, but who are generous and sweet in bed, but the best I’d ever gotten was spoiled or sulking. I—I don’t know what to do with all this attention, Pradeep. I’m not so special. You don’t have to touch me like that if you don’t want.”
“Don’t want?” He laughs. “I can hardly keep my hands off you!”
She laughs, but still squirms under his caresses. “I am sorry. It may take a long time for me to un-learn that I am… ehh…”
He stops again. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I only want you to feel as good as I do.”
“Don’t worry. You already made me feel… things I have never felt.” Maahjabeen recalls how sultry that night had made her, how she’d been filled with a secret magical power that allowed her to overcome all her normal barriers to friendship and love and find physical and emotional pleasure in the arms of this stunning man. “I just don’t know… how… or what we are supposed to do with each other on a regular basis when we aren’t currently swept away with passion. Moving forward. It shouldn’t become an obligation.”
“My mother said when I was a baby I loved to cuddle. Honestly, Maahjabeen, just lying here pressed up beside you is as great an intimacy as, uh, anything. I don’t need sex.”
“You… don’t?” Now this is a bit too much for Maahjabeen to believe. Who is this man, seemingly divorced from all the passions that rule his gender? What kind of ascetic bullshit do they teach their boys in India? Now she feels a bit sorry for him.
Maahjabeen rolls even closer against Pradeep and kisses him, his mouth tasting of sandalwood. She slides her legs between his and feels him stir against her inner thigh. That’s what she thought. “Are you sure you don’t have any… expectations?”
“Well… eh…” Pradeep is taken aback by her sudden turn. He is blinking as fast as he ever has. “I’m sorry, I did mean to ask you about protection. Pulling out isn’t something we can depend on…”
“Yes, I am on the birth control pill for my cycles. I would never have allowed you in otherwise. But I did make assumptions about your recent sexual partners… I shouldn’t have. We shouldn’t have. As scientists, we should have discussed it.”
“Absolutely. You’re right. Oh good. I was very worried. Thank you for taking that responsibility. But I also tried to be very careful. And also, the burden of birth control shouldn’t fall unfairly on one of us or the other. I am sorry if—”
Maahjabeen waves a weary hand. “No no, you have been very respectful, Pradeep.”
“Why do you say that as if you’re disappointed?”
“I am not! Does it sound that way?” Maahjabeen tries to hear how her voice sounds in his ears, but she has always been bad at that. “My unhappy experiences in bed. Eh. Like I said, I need to get over them. But I don’t know how to start.”
“I don’t either.”
“What have your lovers been like?” Maahjabeen feels a stab of jealousy run through her heart, which dismays her. Her feelings for Pradeep are getting too deep too fast.
But he only shrugs, shy. “There have been precisely two girls I have kissed, both in college, one month apart. The second girl, who was very nice, had me touch her breasts. That is the extent of my sexual experience.”
“You were a virgin? I’m the one who took your virginity?” Maahjabeen can’t help but laugh at how sad that sounds. He joins her, chuckling into the hollow of her neck. He kisses it. “Mmm. Yes. That is nice. Although your beard is very scratchy.”
Pradeep pulls away. “I am sorry.”
“No. I like it. And stop apologizing. Nothing is less sexy than a man apologizing for everything. Know what you want.”
“Uh. Okay.” Pradeep’s eyes dart. His mind races. He kisses her clavicle, then spreads his hand across her ribs under the swell of her breast. “This is what I want.”
Maahjabeen’s breath catches and her body tenses in shock.
“What? What is it?” Pradeep pulls back. Maahjabeen pushes herself to her knees. “I’m sorry. No. No apologies. Right. But it was the wrong thing. I won’t do that again.”
But Maahjabeen won’t look at him. She only stares at the entrance to the sea cave. He has lost her. Finally she tears her gaze away from it back to him and reassures him by slipping her hand into his and resting her head against his shoulder. But then she jerks her head up and looks at the entrance again, where the light plays on the water, reflecting against the worn chalky roof.
Now Pradeep is stiffly formal. “Perhaps we should go. I have obviously made you very uncomfortable. We don’t want to be—”
But Maahjabeen clutches him, pressing herself hard against his chest. “No, no… It’s just… Ehh. I am so bad at sharing secrets. If I tell you my secret, will you promise you won’t ever tell anyone?”
This isn’t what he expected her to say. “Uhh… Yes. Of course. I promise.” Pradeep can hardly breathe. He has no idea where this is leading. He only knows he can’t get enough of her intoxicating scent. Their heads are tilted down toward each other; they’ve created a world no larger than a handspan apart.
“It’s the orcas, Pradeep. The orcas saved my life.”
This is her secret? Pradeep blinks. “Wow. Oh, wow.”
“When I was lost in the storm. I would have died. I did not have the energy to paddle back. I was done. Then they found me.”
Pradeep nods. Perhaps she doesn’t remember that she told them all about the orcas when she returned. She wouldn’t shut up about them, raving incoherently for hours. “That’s incredible. I love orcas. What did they do?”
“Well…” Maahjabeen laughs, a brief bitter sound. “Many things. They played around me to bring my spirits up. They tried to share the remains of a sea lion with me. They pushed me when I drifted off course. And they—” She shakes her head, unable to tell how Pradeep might respond to her mysticism. The last thing she needs is him losing respect for her as a scientist. But she needs to tell someone. And more importantly, she needs to tell him. She wants Pradeep to know who she really is. She wants to share everything with him.
He is only watching her. There is love in his eyes.
So she tells him. “They talked to me. They really did. They told me their names. They welcomed me to this part of the ocean. Well, their part of it. They told me they were happy to meet me. They told me…” she looks up at Pradeep’s open face, “…that everything was going to be fine.”
This is new. She hadn’t mentioned orcas speaking to her before. “Really? Like using words or…?”
Maahjabeen releases her breath, only now realizing she held it. Pradeep isn’t even looking at her strangely. He actually seems comforted by the news. “I—I can’t really say… I mean, I wasn’t fully conscious any more. It wasn’t like a clear use of English or Arabic or… Maybe it was more like their words were in my head, or I was able to tell what their sounds meant. Maybe I dreamed the whole thing. But they did bring me back. They did save my life. I know that much.”
Pradeep is so relieved that her secret is about the orcas that he falls back onto their blanket and stares at the eroded gray rock above. “That’s amazing. But you know you’re never supposed to tell anyone what your spirit animal is. I guess you’ll have to kill me now.” They giggle. “So like, what were their names?”
“I can’t… I guess they were like orca sounds with clicks and whistles and… one meant something like slipping-through-the-dark-water-hunting-silver-fish.”
“There are lots of stories of interactions with orcas and humans. Really complicated interactions.”
“So you don’t think I’m crazy?”
“I just want to know what made you think of it right now.”
“Oh!” Maahjabeen squeezes Pradeep’s arm. “Right! I didn’t say! That’s because one just swam in and is watching us right now!”
Ξ
“And if you open up this panel…” Triquet lifts a cardboard flap to reveal a collage of photos with lines connecting different people. They pull two other flaps out and now it looks like a science fair project about their family history. Documents adorn the panels, with drawings of the beach and lagoon and photos of the sub.
“Impressive,” Esquibel declares. “But I still don’t understand why you aren’t just bringing your laptop.”
“The medium is the message,” Miriam says. “You know, I met Marshall MacLuhan once at a mixer when I was young. Strange man. Anyway, we don’t want the Lisicans spending their time marveling over the wonders of screens and keyboards when we’re trying to get some proper answers out of them today.”
Triquet nods. “Miriam convinced me to employ my prodigious crafting skills instead in pursuit of harmony between the two peoples. But I thought yarn and gold stars might be a bit much.”
“It would be a distraction again.” Esquibel nods. “Yes, I like this. It is very straightforward and simple. When are you going?” She will show outward support for this mission but when she gets a chance she’ll privately stock up on trauma kits and check that all the medications are fresh. Be prepared for every eventuality. That is all she can do here with her beloved herd of cats.
“Wait, Triquet,” Mandy says. “I want to hear your spiel. I mean, what are you even going to say to them?”
Triquet nods. “So, start with our shared common denominator, right? Maureen Dowerd? Start a conversation about her. But I’m just hoping one of the villagers points at one of the pictures or drawings here and just starts rattling off a whole story. That would be best. I don’t know. Anybody else have any ideas?”
“My idea,” Jay says, “is that this is going to be a blast. I can’t wait to see the village and the whole rest of the island.”
“You are going?” Esquibel says this with more sharpness than intended. But Jay only lifts his leg and silently flexes his ankle.
“Solid, Doc. As a rock. Ain’t nothing holding me back.”
“But… Jay…” Esquibel looks from face to face. She can’t be the only one with reservations about Jay of all people joining their delicate diplomatic mission.
“Don’t step on any trails until they invite you,” Amy says sourly. “And take lots of pictures. So I can see at least some of it.”
“As a matter of fact, let’s just all defer to Triquet.” Katrina says this with a surprising quiet maturity. “This is their… project. Let them tell us who comes and goes and what we do when we get there.” She looks around the small circle, clustered near the kitchen in the back of the bunker. It’s only the seven of them. Triquet, Esquibel, Miriam, Amy, Katrina, Mandy, and Jay.
“Oo neat.” Triquet surveys the group. “I never got to pick the kickball team. I was always just the last one picked. Hmm.”
“I am not going.” Esquibel holds up her hands, palms out. “But I will insist that you must pick at least one other person, preferably two. Preferably someone with some kind of military background. Jay, did you ever serve?”
“Nah, Doc. I’m a pacifist. Got pretty good at Capoiera at one point. If shit goes down I can sweep legs with the best of them.”
Esquibel shakes her head in disapproval. What a clown this man is. He is more trouble than he’s worth.
Triquet points at their choices. “I’ll take Jay and Miriam and Katrina, I guess. Unless you really want to come, Mandy.”
“No, that’s fine. I’d just be useless.” She gives them all a tight smile. “Five’s probably too many, anyway.”
“Well, then.” Triquet looks at their team. “Away we go!”
Ξ
None of them have been in the tunnels since Esquibel tried to seal them. They appear unchanged. The mud is as unavoidable as ever. The final climb is still a challenge. Jay ranges ahead, eager as a spaniel. He climbs the shaft with vigor and doesn’t wait for them at the top. “Daylight!” he cries out as he nears the cleft in the interior cliff that leads to the village. “It really is a—! Oh. Hi.”
Jay finally pulls back, waiting for the others. They all take the precaution to put on masks and nitrile gloves.
“Morska Vidra!” Katrina calls out. “Bontiik.” She approaches him and chucks him under the chin with the knuckle of her forefinger. His face is impassive. She hopes she’s doing it right.
His silver fox sniffs at Jay’s shoes. “Hey, buddy.” Jay crouches down, holding out his gloved fingertips, but the fox dances away, miffed by the sudden movement.
“This guy’s like a security guard at a museum, goddamn.” Triquet laughs. “You just sits here at the entrance all day? Waiting for us to come out? I mean, what kind of life is that?”
“He Is The Gate Keeper.” Miriam says it as portentously as possible. “Got to be a real senior position, that.”
“I suppose you’re right. And maybe it’s only when we’re around, but still… We should bring him one of the camp chairs at least.”
Morska Vidra turns away and walks back to the village, followed by Triquet, Katrina, Miriam, and Jay.
“Wow…” Jay turns slowly in the middle of the village. The huts are both more sophisticated and more rude than he thought they’d be. A lot of giant pieces of redwood bark used as walls and roofs. They probably keep things nice and watertight inside. And redwood bark has strong antibacterial and insecticidal properties. So the walls won’t really rot. These huts could be like twenty or thirty years old.
The earth is all stamped down from the traffic of countless bare feet over time. Mostly a pale orange clay, the brown duff of the local redwood grove is scattered atop it. They’d let a few bay trees and madrones grow tall among their huts, but otherwise the village stands well clear of the dark redwood grove. Jay nods in approval. “Yeah, it’s cold in there, I bet. Under the big trees.”
All these eyes are on him so it’s natural to talk, right? Triquet is still by the tunnel entrance conferring with Morska Vidra and Miriam is already staring at the cliffs with hunger. Katrina crosses the open space between the huts, intent on a destination. Five or six kids and teens are staring at Jay. So he just starts talking.
“Redwoods are too cold to live in. Stay out here in the sun, right? Or… whenever you get sun. If ever. Yeah, but this is a nice spot. Yep. Good wind protection from the ocean for sure. Probably too much shade in the winter, but who knows? Maybe you get winds from the south then?”
One of the teens mutters something and they all giggle. Are they making fun of him? “Yeah, I’m a big goofy-ass white dude, for sure.” Jay takes a deep breath and removes his mask. He makes a face and the kids all go still. He tries another face, as silly and non-threatening as possible. But they only look at him like statues. Do they not know they can make faces? He puts the mask back on and expels his breath. “Come on. Anybody can do this one.” And he squeezes the left side of his face. “Or try touching your nose with the tip of your tongue.” He takes his mask off and goes cross-eyed in the attempt.
But they still only watch him, silent. Where’s the laughter? Kids love his faces. Has he broken some taboo? Probably. It would just be fucking like him, wouldn’t it? Hadn’t Esquibel told him to keep his mouth shut? And all he’s doing is yapping like a dog.
Jay excuses himself with an embarrassed smile and pulls away from the curious kids to follow Katrina. She stands at the entrance to a low-roofed dugout, even older and more dilapidated than the rest. A middle-aged woman stands in front of its door, urging her to do something or other. Katrina listens intently, trying to divine what the woman wants. She offers a hand but the woman ignores it, still talking forcefully with a great number of sing-song words.
“Jay… See if you can get a recording of this…” Katrina keeps nodding and smiling, trying to accommodate the woman. But she doesn’t appear to be anywhere near the end of her speech.
Jay pulls out his phone and starts recording video. The woman looks at the plastic and glass oblong in his hands and falls quiet. Deciding something, she ducks into the dark entrance of the hut.
Katrina shakes her head, mystified. “Dan. She kept saying dan like the Russian word for day. And she didn’t like us being here. The wrong day?” Katrina leans forward, to pitch her voice through the low dark door. “Ne tot den’? Not Russian, though. Ah, what’s the Bosnian word…? There was a Bosnian girl in one of my classes. We taught each other because it was so easy. But she never taught me how to say wrong. Loš dan? This is a bad day?”
“How could they possibly speak Bosnian?” Jay isn’t too solid on his geography but he’s pretty sure that’s completely on the other side of the world. He couldn’t think of a more preposterous link to this island than a tiny Eastern European country like that. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Lisica is a Bosnian word. And there have been a few others too. It’s the only way we’ve made any progress.”
“Maybe a coincidence? There’s no shortage of words rushing out of their mouths, for sure. A few of them sound familiar and…?”
“Lisica means fox.”
“Right. Huh. Weird.”
The woman re-emerges. She starts a hectoring sing-song again, “Jas ÿan keéna, pročistili se…” She spreads her small brown hands wide, encompassing the tree tops outside the village and the low cliffs beyond. She addresses the sky, and then points with her thumb to the earth and presses one hand against the side of her face like she has a toothache.
Jay records it all. But he feels like he doesn’t need to know the specific words, it’s pretty clear the lady doesn’t want them there, at least right now. Smiling and nodding, Jay gives her a namaste and starts backing out. Katrina is still trying to engage with choice phrases in Russian, but the woman clearly isn’t interested.
Triquet finally arrives, delaying Jay’s retreat. Morska Vidra accompanies them. “This is the old woman’s hut here. So what’s happening? What’s the conversation about?”
Jay shrugs. “All I know is that we missed the party. They want us to try some other time.”
“Seriously? Another time? But I just have a few questions. Here.” Triquet steps forward, beside Katrina. The archaeologist nods at the woman, dressed down in khaki top and slacks. The woman only allows a hitch in her cadence to acknowledge Triquet’s arrival. “Ta-daa…!” With a flourish they open the panels of the display, revealing photos and documents.
The woman falls silent.
“Katrina.” Katrina introduces herself, spreading her hands against her ribs. But her charm, for once, is getting her nowhere.
The woman peers at the photos, squinting at them in turn. She speaks with Morska Vidra: “Kin yet. Adátxʼi haat yadustaa.”
He grunts, crouching beside her to inspect the photos. With his thumb he points at Maureen Dowerd, then they both unwillingly glance at the door of the hut. Their voices are too low to hear.
Finally Morska Vidra stands. He lifts the display to return it to Triquet and it awkwardly folds in his grasp. He doesn’t understand how the materials work, so he goes still.
Triquet guffaws apologetically and pulls the display from the old man’s hands. Morska Vidra speaks with authority, pointing with his thumb at the clouds. “Tuzhit.” He repeats the word in a variety of contexts, pointing to the trees and the huts.
“I think I understood a bit of that,” Katrina murmurs. “Tuzhit is like someone’s name. And he said something like, come back when the sky is… something. Clear? Dark?”
“Will do. Don’t want to overstay our welcome, y’all.” Jay raises a hand in peace. Why aren’t the others taking the hints? They don’t want to lose these people completely. They can come back some other day. They’ve got plenty of time.
“Hold on. Hold on…” Katrina takes out her phone and starts scrolling quickly through her notes. “I thought we’d have way more time for this. But I put together some phrases from a few linguistic family groups and I want to see how they’ll hit.”
Katrina stops in the center of the village. “This is Samoan. ‘O le a tatou faamamaina i tatou lava.’ What do you think?”
But none of the villagers react at all to her words.
“Okay. Wait. Let’s try… Hold on. This is Chumash. From the California coast. ‘C-al’ a.’” She points at her liver. “Or… pVwV. That’s your knee.” Really sparse list here.”
A few of the kids watch her, frowning. The other Lisicans have resumed their daily chores, many wandering away. But Katrina has too many plans to abandon them all so soon. “Wait! Wait!”
“Katrina…” Jay indicates Morska Vidra waiting patiently by the tunnel entrance—the Gate Keeper ready to shut the gate.
She approaches the old man. “Hold on. One last try here. This translator does Bosnian. ‘Gospodine, mi smo vaši prijatelji i samo vas želimo bolje upoznati.’ What do you think? Anything?” But Morska Vidra just stares at her.
“What a miserable day.” Triquet is crestfallen. “We had such high hopes. I just want to study a few artifacts. Is that so wrong?”
“Yep. Cannot wait to get down into those valleys.” They can’t see them from here but Jay can sense the land rolling away to the north, unbounded at last. At least, as soon as the locals let them check it out. It’s classic surfer dynamics here. You got to respect the locals or you’re doomed. Usually a six pack or a couple joints is the currency. Here, Jay has no idea what to try. “Katrina. What did you say to him?”
“Sir, we are your friends and we just want to know you better.” She shrugs, hands raised. “I tried to keep it as neutral as possible.” Finally she gives up in defeat. Her shoulders slump and her head hangs forward. She smiles weakly at Morska Vidra. “Tuzhit.” She points above the village with her thumb tip, agreeing that they must depart. Then she includes the trees and the top of the cliffs. “Tuzhit. Tuzhit.”
But Morska Vidra isn’t listening to her. He has turned away, peering down the dark tunnel, crouched with expectant tension. After a long moment his fox trots out of the darkness, ears back. It stops, one paw up, and looks over its shoulder. The fox flinches. A distant crash rises from within the tunnels and a billow of dust and smoke reaches them.
Smoke. The tunnel is on fire.
Chapter 1 – Hug Like Sisters
January 1, 2024
Two years ago, I realized that I didn’t want to write any more dark or scary content. There’s already too much in the world. And there’s a massive shortage of beauty. We spend so much time in our dystopias we hardly know what a utopia would look like any more.
Well this is mine. LISICA is a fictional island ~1600 km off the coast at the California/Oregon border. It is a mysterious and isolated secret, hidden from the world for the last hundred years. Now, a team of 11 researchers have been given 8 weeks to categorize all life on the island before the wrappers come off and Lisica is introduced to the wider world.
I’ve already written all 60 episodes, all 426,000 words of it. I’m currently recording and producing the audio episodes. Each weekly episode will be published in text and audio formats on my website https://dwdraff.in for free without ads. Come escape with us over the next 60 weeks to this fogbound island of daring adventure and passionate love…!
Audio for this chapter:
Foreword
In 2001 I flew from San Francisco to Tokyo in a window seat. It was one of the first flights that displayed the plane’s location in realtime. Our flightpath followed a high arc over the North Pacific a thousand kilometers south of the Aleutian chain. I stared for hours at the unbroken ocean, filled with dark floating masses of seaweed and patches of green then blue then gray.
Suddenly: an island. An island where no island is recorded to be. We flew right over it, a long double spine of ridges hiding deep valleys. For more than half an hour I was able to study it, shocked to find such a large landmass here. It was four or five kilometers in length, curved like a kidney, its canyons filled with vegetation.
The plane’s position put us over 1600 kilometers north of Hawaii and about 900 kilometers northeast of Midway. On any map you can find, this vast region is blue water and nothing else. But how could an island possibly exist here? And if it did, how had it remained a secret so long?
Lisica is the fiction I’ve written about this very real island.
—DWD
1 – Hug Like Sisters
The endless gray sea remains unbroken in every direction…
…except for a single island, a column of dark rock that interrupts the emptiness like a comma on a blank sheet. The isle’s sheer cliffs rise hundreds of meters from a fringe of white surf on its rugged coasts. Crowned by deep green forest above, its canopy is wreathed in dense fog.
Only in the southeast corner of the isle does a waterfall overtop the cliffs. It spills into a great black pool ringed by an apron beach. A rocky lagoon with jagged black breakers stretches into the ocean from its dark sand, providing an open water shelter for coral and sea grass. Sea lions sleep on the rocks, watched over by guillemots and cormorants. Gulls and terns wheel above in thick profusion, crying out, their nests in the cliffs. It is spring and the hatchlings peek out like balls of cotton, crying to be fed.
Far above, atop the ridge that not even the pelagic birds reach, a child’s bare brown arm pulls aside an obscuring branch that overlooks the ocean. It reveals the gray horizon, unbroken to the south. A dull shell of maritime-layer clouds covers the island and lowers the sky to the tops of the trees. The cries of the birds and barking of the sea lions and roar of the surf fill the air.
After a long moment the sea lions fall silent, blinking at the south horizon. They roll into the water without a sound. Soon after they disappear, a US Navy research ship sails into view.
The ship, white above with a dark blue hull, drops anchor outside the lagoon and a Zodiac is lowered to the rocking sea, where it is loaded with lifejacket-swaddled passengers and gear. The pilot zooms through the breakwaters, smashing through ranks of waves from behind, and navigates through a gap in the barrier rocks into the lagoon. He runs the Zodiac up onto the beach.
Whoever it is watching them from the island’s ridgeline above withdraws from view and slips back under the cover of the trees.
Amy Kubota steps onto the beach, a huge smile on her round face. Silver streaks highlight her unruly black mass of hair. Before her feet touch the sand she is already cataloguing the extensive birdlife above her. But it’s business first. She claps her hands. “Start with the big ones, Jay. Let’s get the Zodiac back on the water as soon—”
“Aye aye, Amy!” Jay Darmer, her grad student, answers a bit too loud. He unfolds himself with expert balance and throws his rangy athletic body at the containers. “This one, Prad. But careful. Don’t capsize the—”
Pradeep Chakrabarti, Amy’s other grad student, stands with a wobble and lifts his end of a giant plastic bin. He is tall and slender with an aristocratic air. The Zodiac shifts as the surf runs up the beach and Pradeep almost drops the bin. He grunts with the effort and flashes a brilliant smile as he splashes ashore. “Baptism, Jay. It’s called a baptism.”
The Zodiac rocks with their departure and Flavia Donaceti squeals, sitting precariously in the center of the craft with her prized possessions. She throws her arms wide with a loud wail as a splash of seawater comes over the side and spatters her round eyeglasses. “Don’t! You boys! Ai! You make me wet!”
A throaty giggle from behind Flavia adds, “Yeh, boys. You can’t just make a girl wet. You gotta at least buy her a drink first.” Katrina Oksana’s Australian accent contrasts with Flavia’s Italian. Their laughs mix together as Katrina heaves herself out.
She leaps lightly onto land, backpack in hand. Katrina looks like a pony-tailed student taking a gap year. With a deep breath she inhales the fresh air. “Ahh. Home sweet home.”
Amy pulls on Flavia. “Come on, Flavia. It’s time.”
Flavia holds several laptops in their bags, as well as a giant black hard case. Her short legs have trouble clearing the width of the Zodiac’s sidewall. She can’t manage it all at once and she stumbles onto the sand, cursing the island in her native tongue and soaking her slip-on sneakers.
The pilot, a midshipman named Curt, hops out and grabs the nose of the craft. He drags it a few paces up the beach and begins unloading duffel bags into a pile. “Sounds like the Captain’s made contact, ma’am!” He shouts in a voice made hoarse from a life on the sea, and lifts the two-way radio clipped to his vest that still buzzes with news. “Your folks will be here soon!”
Amy just stares at him, head full of logistical details, unsure what he means. Then it clicks. “Oh! You mean the other ship! That’s great. Great news, Curt. I had no idea they were already so close.”
Katrina takes a bag from Amy’s hands and hustles it up the beach. The older woman first protests, then sighs and watches as the youngsters churn through the sand at a pace she can’t sustain. So she supervises instead.
Curt calls out, “I’ll be back with the next load. You all get these piles up to the structure there before the waves come in.”
Flavia groans in relief. “There is a structure? Oh, thank god. I was afraid we’d be in tents this whole time. Civilization at last. I get first shower.”
Pradeep crosses the crescent beach at a diagonal toward an old concrete bunker hidden among ferns and buckthorn. He calls out over his shoulder, “Yes, you’ll recall that the notes mentioned a kind of facility. No details about it, though.” He stands in front of it, regarding the concrete walls stained from decades of exposure to the ocean. “Ah. Well. This must be why.” It is a ruin.
A moment later, Jay steps into its empty doorway wielding a carbon fiber hiking pole like a sword. “Hello?” He edges his way in, squinting at the gloom. Columns of gray light stream through holes in the corrugated steel roof. “Here snakey snakey…”
From outside, Amy squawks. “Snakes? What kind? Let me see!” She pokes her head through the nearest window, eagerness adding wrinkles to the corners of her eyes.
“No, haven’t seen any yet.” Jay pokes at piles of debris. “It’s just that we used to play in an old abandoned bunker like this down in Big Sur and man did it always get jammed full of snakes.”
Amy frowns, the field biologist unable to square certain details. “At this latitude, though? And so close to the ocean? I don’t—” A sharp sound interrupts her. Something catlike twitches in the far corner and bounds up, darting through a back window before Amy can track it. “Whoa! Jay! What was that? I couldn’t tell! Some kind of mustelid?”
“Fuck. I didn’t see.”
“Me neither.”
“What’s a mustelid?” Katrina asks. “Sounds like a clam.”
Amy laughs. “The weasel family. Ferrets and such.”
Jay crosses the bunker to peer out the window it escaped. “Was it unique? Any details at all? Aw, man. Hope it’s a new species. Can you imagine? We’ll name her Mustela kubota.”
Amy laughs, waving a self-deprecating hand. “Oh, Jay, you’re so sweet. But we’ll see. How about we name it after whoever it bites first, eh?” She steps inside. “So… Safe in there?”
Katrina’s hand grabs Amy’s sleeve. “Spiders. In Australia any abandoned building like this would be absolutely stuffed with spiders. Watch it in there, mate.”
Jay cackles. “If only Katrina knew about our arachnid obsession! Prad! The specimen jars!”
“Not yet, Jay.” Amy sweeps a corner of the building clear of litter with her boot. “We need to get the bags above the tide line first. Curt was right. It’s rising.”
Pradeep’s head appears in the window. “Do we really know that? I’ve got a global tide chart here but this island isn’t on it.”
Flavia adds, “And I lost signal like six hours ago. I mean, where even are we? My map software isn’t working out here. It’s crazy, there’s no record of an island anywhere near here.”
Out of habit, Amy fishes out her phone and looks at it. No signal, of course. “I mean, so this is just a hypothesis, but let’s say Midway is the closest landmass. If this island mostly shares tide and weather pattern characteristics with its closest neighbor then—”
In the back corner, Jay pokes a pile of dried ferns that hide a nest of giant crabs. They charge, claws larger than his hands, and he falls back with a shriek, clacking the pole against their carapaces. “Back! Back!” But they surge past him toward the light of the door. “Okay, well, forward then! Look out!”
The crabs run for the door and they all shriek.
Pradeep shouts out, “Don’t let them pinch you!”
The crabs scramble outside and the chaos settles with the dust. They all gather at the door, giggling like school children. But Amy is already making notes on her phone. “Like a… variant of coconut crab! Amazing! Definitely genus Birgus. But so dark!”
Katrina shivers. “Careful. Those claws can go right through your leg. I swear. I’ve seen videos. Strong as shit.”
Flavia declares, “I am not sleeping in there. No way. Tents sound good now. Real good. Maybe up on platforms?”
Pradeep nods, pensive. “Yeah. Good plan. Tall platforms. Some kind of barrier on the legs. Got to keep it clear up above. Yeah.”
Ξ
As the others continue to unpack, Amy and Jay step quietly through a grove of mature redwoods, awed by the scale. Their trunks are up to five meters in diameter, rising a hundred meters above their heads. Amy carries a green frond, fallen from its canopy, studying it.
“For all intents and purposes this is…” she shrugs, shaking her head in wonder, “I mean, superficially is all I can say for certain,” she stops and peers upward, “but all these trees appear to be identical to Sequoia sempervirens, California Coast Redwoods.”
Jay snorts. “Untouched. Undiscovered. Holy smokes. This is crazy, Amy. I mean, when has this ever happened? Ever? I don’t think so. Sure, there’s like the Dawn redwoods in China but no way, this isn’t even what that is. This is an actual sequoia grove. They’ve never been found outside of California. This is—” He makes a garbled, incoherent sound. Amy grabs his hand and they share a sacred moment. “Shit, boss. We could spend the rest of our careers on this right here. This grove alone.”
“We can call it Tenure Grove.”
They giggle together in the gloom.
Jay urges them forward, deeper into the grove. The understory is sparse, the hillocks they climb covered in redwood duff and clover. He waves away a cloud of flies and presses on, only getting about a dozen trees deep before coming up against the base of the cliffs. Thick banks of ferns climb upward, eventually giving way to manzanita clinging to the vertical wall of rock and dirt.
He ranges at the base like a foxhound on the scent, looking for a way to ascend. “Crap. Too crumbly to climb. Is this volcanic? I mean, it’s gotta be, right? What’s the bedrock gonna be here, doc?”
Amy just shakes her head, watching the white gulls and terns wheeling far above. “The geologist is on her way. A damn fine one, too. Yeah, nobody’s climbing this cliff here.”
But Jay can’t be contained. “Maybe we can climb the waterfall instead. Here. This way.” He pushes through the foliage to their right, toward the east. “Oh. Watch out. That may be poison oak. Or… Maybe not. I think it’s actually an analogue.”
They force their way through a bank of flowering shrubs they don’t recognize, crowing about their likely provenance, and finally break through to the edge of the waterfall’s dark pool. Amy edges outward onto an outcropping of slick worn basalt and regards the falling plume. It isn’t the mightiest waterfall in the world but its heavy unbroken stream falls from on high, scattering mist and droplets across the grove, crashing loudly into the pool with foam.
After a long moment Jay returns to her, face streaked in mud, branches in his hair. “What happened to you?” Amy asks.
“Fell off.”
“You fell off the cliff? Are you hurt?”
“No. I mean, no like closed head injuries. Well, not any more, at least.” He peers upward. “Damn. Not a chance. I mean, we sailed around the whole island and those cliffs look like they ring the whole thing. This may be the only entry point. I was hoping there’d at least be a game trail or something here.”
“It is so cold. We’re basically at southern Oregon latitude as far as I can tell. This is a true temperate island. A major island with a temperate coastal cloud forest in the North Pacific. Unbelievable. We’re like, what, a thousand kilometers from land?”
“Yeah, that’s what I was trying to triangulate on the plane from our last landmarks and the sun. After a few hours it turned into a really fucking long and narrow isosceles triangle, that’s for sure. We are waaaaay out here. Over a thousand klicks is my bet. And we’re still super far north of Hawai’i. Amy, there isn’t any island of any size on any map in the world at this location. But nobody seemed to want to pipe up about it in front of the Navy dudes so I left it…”
“Yeah, this whole thing still has that weird military vibe, for sure. It hasn’t gone away at all. But look, Jay. They’ve treated us really first class so far and I’ve definitely joined sketchier expeditions. Or at least I did when I was your age. But don’t worry. Alonso is one of my oldest friends. I trust him 100% and if he says he’ll take care of us then he’ll absolutely take care of us. And we already made the dendrological find of the century!”
Jay holds his dirty hands up. “Hey, no regrets here. Work with a living legend, newly returned from the dead, and chill out on mystery island for eight weeks? Fuck yeah. Living the dream here. Come on, Amy. Uhh… we can try to get back to camp this way. Or not. Wow. So overgrown. Not even any game trails leading to the water. Why not?”
“No large ruminants here? Or at least none who can make it down the cliff to the beach? Maybe there’s populations above in the interior. But also, no ticks yet. Another sign there’s a chance no large mammals live here. Oh my god this place is a pristine genetic reservoir. Come on. We have to tell Prad.”
They backtrack the way they came.
Ξ
Pradeep and Katrina are busy building their third platform of fallen branches at the edge of a cluster of trees. He wields a foldable handsaw and she cuts notches in them with a huge bowie knife. They’ve stacked nearly a hundred logs.
“God these smell so nice!” Katrina crushes up the leaves under Pradeep’s nose. “Smell.”
“Yes, bay leaves. Fantastic. Well. Our cooking will taste good at least. How’s this? Sturdy?” The logs lay on frames held together by twine. They look rough but mostly even.
“Let me see.” Flavia pushes past them and spreads a black tarp over the branches. Then she shoves her hard case onto it. “Solid so far.” Flavia puts her laptop bags on the platform and lifts herself onto it. It only sinks a bit in the sand. “Not bad. But what about my shower, eh? What am I supposed to do, just wait for rain?”
Katrina, unimpressed with Flavia’s complaints, gestures to the east. “I mean, the waterfall’s right there, love.”
“Ha. You mean the one that’s ten degrees? No, grazie.” Flavia takes out a laptop and boots it up. She attempts to pair it with her phone. “So of course there is no reception out here until I set up the node. What was the last signal anyone got?”
“Well…” Pradeep consults his phone. “At 2:36am PST I got my last text. A friendly reminder that it’s time to renew my car’s warranty before it’s too late.”
“So… that’s about nine hours, assuming we moved across two time zones.” Flavia tries to calculate. “I don’t know how fast that helicopter flew, but it must have been over two hours. What is a nautical mile again? Let’s say we were moving twenty knots after we transferred to the ship. Then we sailed for seven hours?”
Katrina pulls a fistful of hard candies out of her pocket and offers one to Pradeep and one to Flavia. “My guess is way over a thousand kilometers from the mainland. And, um, I heard we weren’t gonna have any internet out here at all.”
Flavia laughs, cracking the candy with her teeth. “Impossible. Why would Doctor Alonso bring a research mathematician out to the middle of nowhere if she can’t access her online resources? That’s why I brought a sat phone—” she proudly lifts the chunky unit “—and a platinum tier prescription paid by a special EU research fund at Torino.”
“Oh, thank god,” Katrina sighs. “I was afraid I’d lose track of the Marvel Universe out here for eight weeks with no—” She stops, registering a voice shouting at them from the beach. Katrina turns, shading her eyes, and spots a woman running at them from another Zodiac that has just landed on the sand.
Pradeep waves and calls out to her, but the tall woman is in no mood for introductions. She nears them, gasping, and reaches for the sat phone. “No! You CAN’T!” This is Esquibel Daine, a medical doctor in her early thirties, and her face is filled with fury.
Flavia screams as Esquibel pulls it from her grasp. She shouts in a mix of outraged Italian and English: “No! Chi sei? What are you doing—? Quello è il mio telefono! You can’t—!”
Esquibel lectures her in an East African accent. “The rules were NO INTERNET. We made it quite explicit. They will KICK US OFF the island if we give away our location.”
“Whoa. Damn. Okay, okay.” Katrina tries to play peacekeeper. “Just slow down, little Miss intensity. Who is they?”
“Rules?” Flavia waves the word away like it’s an annoying gnat. “I mean, it really read just as a suggestion…”
Esquibel ignores Flavia’s protests, frantically studying the sat phone. “Is this on? Are you transmitting?”
“Che pazzia!” Flavia throws her hands up, irate. “You can’t just take my phone from me! If I’d known this would be some kind of police state I wouldn’t have come!”
Pradeep assures Esquibel, “No. She’d just taken it out of its case. Nothing happened. Nothing is on. No signals have been sent. Everything is fine. Now. Who are you?”
“It isn’t?” Esquibel drops her hands in relief. “Oh, thank god.” She calls out to the two others still getting out of the Zodiac at the surf line. “Still secure! It isn’t on!” She glares at Flavia one last time, then jogs back to the others with the confiscated sat phone.
Amy and Jay appear, drawn by the raised voices. Jay watches the argument with concern but Amy only has eyes for one of the other figures at the water’s edge. He is older, a bearish man supporting his weight in the sand with an aluminum cane.
“Alonso…? Alonso!”
Amy rushes to him.
Ξ
By sunset, the last of the Zodiac deliveries are being dragged up the beach by the younger members of the team. The wind whips fog and whitecaps across the surface of the dark waves.
Sitting in a camp chair, Alonso watches in helpless frustration. He wishes he could help but he can’t. So he just grips his cane and tries to accept that others must do the little things for him.
Triquet, a field archaeologist dressed in a pink satin vest and comically-large work boots, swoons at Alonso’s feet. Triquet has green hair and multiple piercings, their slender non-binary body tattooed with ancient Olmec and Toltec symbols. “Heavens to Murgatroyd I’m tired.”
“I’m tired just watching you.”
Amy appears at Alonso’s shoulder with a steaming mug. “The magic of hot liquids.” She places the mug in Alonso’s grateful hands. Then her gaze falls upon the prostrate Triquet. “Oh, you poor thing. Would you like a cup too…?”
Alonso gestures at Triquet. “Doctor Amy Kubota, this is Doctor Triquet. Triq, Amy is one of my oldest friends.”
Amy curtsies and gives Triquet a dimpled smile. “I can already tell we’ll be great friends. Green tea?”
Triquet rolls onto their back and gasps. “Tea? You’re a goddess.”
Amy amends herself. “Best friends!”
Alonso says proudly, “Triquet just landed a full research position in field Archeology at Pitt. Real rising star here, Ames.”
“Oh, great,” Amy complains. “Way to make me feel old. I was an adjunct til I was almost forty!” With a rueful smile she shuffles over to her platform to fetch another mug. In the gathering gloom the others claim platforms and start unpacking their bags atop them. Jay strings a hammock between two bay trees.
Flavia watches him, a little resentful of the hammock’s crab-proof clearance. But his system looks more complicated than she cares to track and when he isn’t done until he clips in a bugnet layer, she waves a hand in front of her face and sighs. “You know, the bugs aren’t even that bad here. When I heard Pacific island I thought… Non lo so. It will be a tropical jungle like Borneo.”
Esquibel has added a couple layers now that the evening chill is setting in. She drags her duffel bag to a spot in the sand beside Pradeep’s platform, an apologetic smile on her face. “Excuse me.”
Pradeep crouches atop his platform, fastening the corners of his pyramid tent to the platform’s logs. He finds a warm smile for Esquibel. “Ah. She’s back. And we still haven’t been introduced. I’m Pradeep. From Amy’s lab.”
“Yes. Hello. I am Doctor Esquibel Daine. Forgive me for before. I was concerned about our operational security—”
“Understood.”
“—and then Doctor Alonso himself. I had to get back to him to make sure he could… well, it turns out he had no trouble, really… getting out.”
“Nice to meet you. I look forward to eight weeks of working quite closely and happily together. All of us.”
She takes his hint with a stiff nod. “Yes. Well. I appreciate your words, Pradeep. Thank you. I do too. Now.”
“Fantastic. How can I help you?”
“These platforms can move, right?”
“Move?”
She sighs in frustration. “I don’t understand why you spent the day building platforms in the first place. We can’t build structures here. Very important. And these are against the rules.” Esquibel points at Flavia’s platform and his own. “Hers and yours are visible to satellites. We need to at least get them under the trees.”
“Aha. I see. And that’s important, is it?”
Esquibel raises her hands in the air in appeal. “Did nobody read the documents? You signed them.”
“I did. I did, Doctor Daine. But they were heavily redacted by the time they got to us. One entire page was black lines except the word FACILITY. We really have very little idea of what we’re doing here. If there’s any chance—”
“Yes. Of course. All in due course. But could you help me get the platforms under the trees first? Right up against the ferns.”
Pradeep decides with a smile and a nod to cooperate. They approach Flavia’s platform to explain what they are doing. But she is having none of it.
“What, are you crazy? The ferns are where the crabs are.”
“What crabs?” Esquibel tries to lift one of the platform’s corners. “Could you please get off for a moment?”
“Not if you’re taking my platform to the ferns. Aren’t you listening? The crabs are the whole reason we built the platforms.”
“Crabs? What are these crabs?”
Pradeep leans in and quietly describes the crabs to Esquibel, his hands spreading wide to encompass their size.
Esquibel recoils in horror. Without a word she picks up her gear and places it on the last unclaimed platform. Then she helps Flavia and Pradeep drag their platforms as far away from the ferns as they can get, to the far side of the beach where the platforms of Katrina, Triquet, Alonso, and Amy cluster beside the bunker.
Amy overheard their argument over the quiet surf and wind. Solicitous, she calls out, “You know, Esquibel, the distribution of coconut crabs reaches the Indian Ocean. They might be familiar. Have you ever seen any on Kenyan beaches?”
Esquibel pulls her platform grimly along the beach. “How would I know? I’m from Nairobi. Have they attacked anyone yet?”
Jay, the only one left on the west side of the camp, swings in his hammock and calls out, “As far as we can tell they’re afraid of us. They scuttled into these ferns and haven’t been seen since.”
Alonso watches them labor, silhouetted by the orange of the sunset. Their voices soothe him and the jaggedness inside him eases, giving him respite. After a moment, another figure steps in front of the sunset, facing him. He smiles. “Ah. Katrina Oksana.”
“Señor Alonso.” In the fading light the young woman is like some mythical naiad emerging from the surf. She searches his face. “Mucho gusto. Amazing to meet you in the flesh.”
He laughs. “Ai, Dios mío, you have an Aussie accent. Of course. I never knew. All the times I thought I heard your voice in my head. It was completely wrong. And you’re just so, ehh…”
She laughs and swings her ponytail of straight auburn hair. “I know. I look sixteen. But don’t worry. I’ll be twenty-three this summer. I can take care of myself out here. I promise. Thank you so much for this. For everything.”
“No, it is I who must thank you. From the bottom of my heart. You were my only light for far too long in the darkness. You must tell me. How is Pavel? It was Gerasim’s last question.”
“Getting better. Every day. He still doesn’t really leave the house but now he has our mom to take care of him. She just retired and gave me a break so I can do this. With Pavel, it’s just day to day.”
“Yes. Yes, I know it is.”
Katrina seizes his hand. They share hot, bitter tears.
Amy has returned with Triquet’s mug. She watches Alonso’s encounter with Katrina, her face troubled. “Alonso, I’m sure you’re tired after the long haul but if there’s any chance we can get just a few answers tonight I know my whole team—and, well, everybody here—is just burning up with—”
“Of course. Of course.” Alonso wipes his eyes and faces them. “You all deserve to know everything. Well. At least everything I know. Which isn’t all that much. But I chose these teams for this research project because I knew you could all handle this situation the right way. Professionally, with ethics and rigor. But also with humanity.” His prelude silences the camp. They all hang on his words. “So what are your questions?”
“Um, where’s the fucking hotel bar, Alonso?” Flavia demands. “I mean, what am I supposed to spend my per diem on here?”
Everyone laughs and the tension eases. Alonso answers, “Well, the closest one is probably about 1900 kilometers east. In Crescent City, California, I figure.”
“Where are we?” Pradeep asks. “What is this island?”
Alonso says, “Its name is Lisica.”
Katrina claps. “Ha. Fox.”
Amy asks, “Lisica means fox?”
“In some Slavic languages, yeh.”
“Huh.” Amy calls out in the darkness. “Hey, Jay. Maybe that wasn’t a mustelid in the bunker this morning.”
“Aw, shit,” his voice emerges from the gloom. “Yeah that could have been a small Vulpes. I wish I’d seen its tail.”
“Fox Island,” Katrina declares.
“The foxiest of isles,” Triquet purrs. “That’s hot. So why doesn’t it show up on any maps, boss man? What’s the big secret here?”
“And why,” Flavia interjects, “did we all have to sign such a restrictive NDA, Alonso? I mean, a lot of those clauses are barely legal. And totally unenforceable. I’d like to see you try to—”
Esquibel turns on Flavia. “Could you please stop trying to break the rules every five minutes? There aren’t very many and they’re very important and this is a unique and important oppor—”
Pradeep interrupts her. “Yes, Doctor Daine. But whose rules?”
Esquibel sighs and makes a vague gesture. “Our bosses. Who are also our funding sources. Who are also our clients. Well, mostly. Anyway, who do you think is in charge?”
“That’s right, mi amigos,” Alonso says quietly. “We are at the very tail end of a decades-long classified U.S. Air Force program. That concrete shoebox there must have been some kind of listening post. Who knows? It’s all they built here in nearly seventy years. Lisica is a hidden place. The prevailing currents and winds all lead away from here. It’s almost always under this fogbank. It wasn’t even discovered until the twentieth century. But now there’s a new global satellite agreement about to go into effect and they can’t keep it a secret any longer. So a couple Air Force scientists met me at my debriefing and pitched this project to me. Eight weeks on a pristine island to categorize as much of it as we can before the wrappers come off and the whole world learns of Lisica.”
A moment of silence, then Flavia laughs. “That is such bullshit! Impossible. Impossible. A secret island? No. In this day and age? One hundred percent impossible!”
Alonso nods in agreement. “That’s what I said. But Colonel Baitgie, he’s the commanding officer in charge of the Lisica mission, said this isn’t even the only one. There is an unspoken agreement among the governments and corporations of the world who own and operate satellites to keep places like this one secret. Who knows how many corners of the world remain hidden. Nice guy. A trifle too religious for my tastes but he did take good care of me once they got me stateside.”
“Debriefing?” Pradeep is only twenty-four, but his gravity is that of an older man. “Doctor Alonso, we’ve all heard mention now of… well, something. Some ordeal you underwent? But nobody—”
“I was tortured.” Alonso’s voice is a rasp. “In a gulag.”
Pradeep gasps and drops his eyes. “Ah. I see. I’m very sorry.”
Amy steps behind Alonso and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Oh, god, was it really that bad? Alonso and his partner Charles Wu were on a Central Asian paleogenomics field assay when we lost touch with them five years ago near the Kyrgyzstan border. We still haven’t heard any details…”
“One day we were at the dig, just me and a few local guides and laborers,” Alonso recounts in a rough voice. “Next thing we know we’re surrounded by gunmen. No insignia. Speaking one of the Turkic languages. That’s all I know about them. They said there was a fight back at basecamp. Charlie died, Amy. Charlie and Nadya both. I couldn’t get back in time. Charlie died in my arms.”
“Oh, Alonso, no…”
“Baitgie swore.” Alonso’s eyes swim with tears. “He swore he’d take care of Minnie and Sarah. Said Charlie would get a pension. The whole deal. You have to help me hold him to it.”
“Yes. I will. Minnie had another baby, you know. Like six months after Charlie left. A little boy.”
Alonso’s face finally crumples in grief. “Oh… He never knew…”
Ξ
In the gray light of the minutes before dawn, Flavia’s screams split the still air. Birds wing away from trees. Someone in a tent grunts. Jay’s head is the first to emerge from his hammock. Esquibel is the first to get her boots on and stumble toward the waterfall.
She gets to the edge of the wide dark pool moments later, reaching into a black satchel on her hip. But Jay and Katrina are right behind her so she removes her hand from it.
Flavia screams again and they all look in fear at the source of the sound. Then their faces split into relieved smiles.
Flavia is naked, turned away, standing on a rocky outcrop near the base of the waterfall. Every time a blast of cold water shocks her she screams again.
Jay laughs. “Signorina got her shower after all!”
In the luminous dawn, Flavia’s marbled pale skin and dark curls at the base of the falls transforms her into a Raphael masterpiece. She turns and with a wave beckons them to join her.
Ξ
As the camp wakes up, Triquet brings a tray piled with energy bars to Amy’s platform. Amy hands them a steaming mug in exchange. The pair eat their bars and share the silence, looking out at the beach and the lagoon beyond.
Alonso sits out there in his camp chair, at the surf’s edge, staring at the horizon. Triquet points at him. “I had a border collie used to do that.”
“He hasn’t seen her in five years.”
Triquet shakes their head, puzzled. “I once saw Miriam Truitt give a presentation on the dating of Eocene ultramafic lavas. She somehow made the subject fascinating. What a communicator. But I just can’t see it. They must be the oddest of couples.”
Amy only smiles. “He and I were lovers in grad school. Did Alonso ever tell you?” She looks sidelong at Triquet who plays along with a cartoonish shocked face. “We were so happy. Taking blood samples from wild horses in Nevada. But then Miriam showed up. And it was over.” Triquet makes a sympathetic face. “No no. Not in a bad way. We all became the best of friends. But they just fit together so well. Better than any two people ever should. And they’re both such giants in their fields. We could tell, even then, that they were on a whole different level of awareness. It was like a, like being in the middle of some implausible Hollywood storyline. When you ever hear the phrase ‘they were made for each other,’ it was coined for Miriam and Alonso.”
“And now he’s waiting for her.”
Amy smiles, her face full of tenderness. “That’s Alonso.”
Ξ
The hours pass but the sun never breaks through the low maritime layer. The sea is green. The gulls and terns cry on the thermals and the sea lions return, watching the humans ashore as they float with their glassy black eyes just breaking the surface of the water.
Everyone but Alonso is busy at the camp, building long lab tables under the trees from more logs and repurposed plastic containers.
Esquibel curses at the medical station she is building and holds up her hands in surrender. “I have no idea how to create sanitary conditions here until I can get a roof over my head.”
“Oh, we got a few tricks on archaeology digs,” Triquet tells her. “Not like clean rooms, but they should be sufficient. And it looks like fresh water shouldn’t be an issue here.”
Esquibel makes a face. “I’d like to get it tested first. But until we can do that, we have to boil or filter everything. Right, everyone? The water is suspect until further notice. I don’t want to have to treat any of you for giardiasis or, God forbid, lepto.”
Flavia points at the bunker and swears, “I am not going in there. Until it has been like cleansed with fire. All the crabs and snakes and spiders. Nuke it from orbit. Then maybe. We’ll see.”
Amy tut-tuts her. “Well that’s not very good guest behavior. And Jay wouldn’t get his specimens. Give us just a few days to catalog what we can and then we’ll be able to clean it out and move in.”
Pradeep holds up a cupped hand and stares at the sky. “Is it starting to rain? We should rig tarps. Can I get a hand?”
Instead, Katrina points at the horizon. “Look, a ship.”
At the water’s edge, Alonso stands leaning on his cane.
A sleek gray catamaran-style research vessel flying a Japanese flag pulls up at the mouth of the lagoon and drops anchor. Another Zodiac is lowered and eventually it arrows toward them.
Miriam Truitt stands in the prow, auburn hair streaming back. She strains toward Alonso. The rain starts to fall more heavily. When the craft beaches she leaps out and runs, as fast as she’s ever run, through the surf and deep sand to him. He hobbles toward her and a gasp of grief escapes her as she sees how damaged he is. When she reaches him she wraps him carefully in her arms and kisses his face, again and again, in benediction and worship. “I will never… ever… let you go… ever again.”
“Ah, Novia,” Alonso finally allows himself to groan, the pain so long buried finally rising to the surface. “They hurt me so bad.”
She hugs him possessively. “Never again. Mi niño is back.”
But he casts his head down and shakes it no. “No. The boy is gone. And—and I’m not sure how much of me is left.”
“Don’t say that.” She grips him fiercely again. “We get to grow old together. You promised.”
The rain mixes with their tears. They shiver, holding each other. Finally Alonso sags against her and allows himself to be loved.
Two others get out of the Zodiac. Maahjabeen Charrad is a stern-faced oceanographer in a teal headscarf who is preoccupied with corralling the two single-seat sea kayaks they tow. When she finally gets them both above the tideline she straightens and frowns at the island and its occupants like someone who is beginning a prison sentence.
The other, Mandy Hsu, is a coltish young woman who fights to disentangle herself from piles of cords and straps at the bottom of the boat. She waves at someone in the camp and bounces forward, eager and happy. “Esquibel! Esquibel! It’s me! Mandy!”
At the camp, all the others turn to Esquibel in surprise. At first she frowns to hear her name called out, but when Esquibel hears the name Mandy her stern face splits into the most beautiful grin, a sight none of them have yet seen, and she runs toward the girl with a cry of joy. “Mandy! I can’t believe it! Why didn’t anyone tell me you were coming? Oh, it’s Mandy! My Mandy girl!”
They hug like sisters.
6 responses to “Chapter 1 – Hug Like Sisters”
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THANK YOU
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Great, thanks for sharing. I was just thinking th
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Woah guy. I wonder at times but not often (I don’t reach out to my closest friends and fam often or at all and realize it’d be betta if did-lives in it’s own littleman’s-type-world in 3D). What is this man-a royal gem a loyal organism, a kindest, honest feller, hard adventuralist/journeysman who walks the goodlandz of God, the creative spectacular of SF-a grand friend there even and !now! What has this man been workin on these past times, couple years, 2020 and to date. I expect it be somethin profound-it always is. Playwrites, books, audio tracks and such. Always obtain the drive, focus and action followin through with such projects-pretty neet. I’ll read er realsoon. It looks like a grand read.
I be cumn out there soon. and this time I won’t skip SF, residn direct to the mtns of Skitown delight, and then to El Sal for a tropical adventuremans’ specialty. Haven’t been out there much at all since the plandemi as I was prior-every couple months workn for my best gardening clients in town, visitin the buds of CA. I’ve been continuing pursuing the annual ski trips there and stayed/remained in Sac where Vonz now resides besides the Mtn Club Kirkwood place. Interstin times these last couple years in these parts. I’d lost my mind again and probably mistakn the rememberences I’ve found er just yet.
Oh yeah I have to finish the plane tok purchase I’ll look see if have time now:I’m thinkin Feb 21st to March 10th abouts for the CA. Feb 21st to March 1st perhaps for SF, prior to skiin/Sac visits, and El Sal again.
We catch up soon. Sushiis nmore-the Sunset Snackups-Fam and Littleman-like 20 years back when I was just a boy. Perhaps a couch still emits the odor of my oily body, and mites-markn my sleepman’s zone enough for a near future health, REM-inducin Sleeps acceptance. a couple eves around this time. ? Let em know.
-Neet- and -Kwel-.
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Awesome!What a treat to revive this from you. Best of luck and happy new year.
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Hi Walker,
Great to hear from you and congratulations on your newest (or at least newish) project!! I look forward to pursuing this once we get our kiddo back in school and I have a millisecond to myself. ð¤ Big hugs to all of you and hope we can connect this year. â¤ï¸
[image: IMG_1731.jpeg] [image: IMG_1821.jpeg]
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WOW! Quite a project! Congratulations on the result. I’m listening to the podcast… What’s the strategy to make money from your investment?
Patrick
DW Draffin -- Lisica 
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