Lisica Chapters

Thanks for joining us on our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!

Audio for this episode:

14 – Of Lisica

The ebullience that normally animates Amy is now absent and she looks older than her fifty-six years. “It isn’t what you think, Mandy. I just… My past is…” She shakes her head, wanting to say it right. It’s been a while since she’s had this conversation though. Amy’s eyes scan the eastern horizon. A patch of blue has broken through, illuminating the ocean in that spot with depth. Perhaps that can be her inspiration.

Mandy watches Amy wrestle over her words with growing anxiety. Sheesh. What is the older woman going to say? Just what unwanted burden is Amy about to lay upon her?

Finally, Amy’s shoulders drop and she realizes that none of the long prefaces she was about to add to the statement make any difference. It’s always like this. “This is more information than you wanted, I’m sure, but I’m trans. I was born male.”

“Oh.” Mandy blinks. She exhales a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Ohh…”

“Sorry. I still wrestle sometimes with all the hidden identity stuff. Dual images and masks. You know. And I just got a little careless there and forgot that you didn’t know what I was talking about and how I might sound. I’m really sorry.”

Mandy is so relieved she’s giddy. “No. That’s fine. I just totally misinterpreted what I was hearing. And that’s on me. Oh my god, that’s so depressing. I thought I was going to get to grow out of all the coming-out stuff someday but I guess not. I can’t believe you never get to let go of it. No, honey, I’m the one who’s sorry. I was like ready to kick you to the curb after one comment.”

“Well it was a pretty weird comment…”

They both laugh again, the tension broken. Mandy grabs Amy’s arm again. “So wait. I thought you and Alonso used to date.”

“Yes, when Alonso and I fell in love, it was 1991 and I was still a man. We were a very happy couple. Really just a summer of love. He and Miriam and me… That became it’s own whole thing. Such a wonderful thing. It’s what taught me that I really was a woman.”

“Then Alonso’s bi?”

“Another thing Miriam taught us. We thought he was as gay as I am. I think she’s the only woman he’s ever loved.”

“Oh. Wow.” Mandy can’t believe how many assumptions she had made about these three old people, which fall away now like ice sheets calving from glaciers, dropping thunderously into the deep. “I had no idea. You discreet fuckers.” She laughs. “Esquibel keeps wondering if Alonso is closet-homophobic. Oh my god. She’s going to get a real hoot out of this.”

“That’s hilarious. I should have said something before. It’s just I’ve always been really private about it, all these years.”

“No, I totally understand. I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

“And I mean, I knew that you’d probably be okay with it but it’s still something I just don’t talk about with nearly anyone.”

“Well, then I’m flattered.”

“Oh, god,” Amy reels. “That’s not what I meant at all. I’m not so special that the needs of an old maid like me mean so much.”

“Yes you are,” Mandy hugs Amy again, this time with true sisterhood. “And yes they do.”

Ξ

Esquibel inspects Jay in the clean room. The swelling in his hand has gone down and his ankle is regaining mobility. He is healing quite quickly. Good. But she doesn’t need him knowing that yet. He’ll just run off and hurt himself again, as long as Miriam is poking around in those caves under their feet.

“See? My NBA career ain’t over yet.” He smiles bravely so she can’t see how agonizing all that manipulation is. “No headaches in two days. Mandy’s been working it all out, teaching me a whole new meaning of the concept of pain. But I’m all set now.”

“I know. Her manipulations hurt so much, don’t they?” She inspects his pupils with her phone’s light. They are even and responsive. She is running out of reasons to keep him shelved.

“Well, as my uncle once told me, there’s two kinds of pain. There’s permanent pain that leads to damage and nobody wants that. But then there’s temporary pain from like stretching and bruising and adjusting to discomfort. And that doesn’t hurt you. Going through it makes you stronger.”

“Like when I flex your ankle?”

“Ha—aaaah! Okay now you’re just making some sadistic doctor point about something. I didn’t say I was fully healed…”

“And what would you do in a tunnel when you need to depend on that ankle to get you out of a tight spot? Will you push it to failure again? Of course you will.”

“I’m not twelve.”

Esquibel only looks at him. Finally Jay drops his gaze.

“Fine. Tomorrow is a week. Can I please act like a human again after a week?”

“We shall see. Now go rest and stop aggravating everything.”

Jay sits up and hops to his feet. But he hangs back at the clean room’s exit. “Hey, I got a question, Doc, a personal question, if you don’t mind me asking. Since we’re all one big Cuban family.”

Esquibel turns on Jay, hand on hip. “What.”

“I was just wondering. The name Esquibel. I knew a girl in my high school with that name but her family was from Guadalajara. Isn’t it a Spanish name?”

She is unwilling to encourage him, but it is her favorite story. And so far he just looks at her with that puppy innocence. “My mother. She was an exchange student in Mexico City in the nineties. Her host mother was named Esquibel. It was her favorite time in her whole life. She still speaks Spanish, even though she has never been able to return.”

“Oh. Got it. That’s so sad. We should like all pitch in and make sure she gets back there. Mexico kicks ass.”

“We? You don’t even know my mother.”

“Yeah, well her daughter’s been taking real good care of me so I figure I owe her.” Jay flashes a shaka. “Peace out, Doc.”

He leaves the clean room and scans the interior of the bunker. Pradeep is at a microscope. Katrina works on her laptop beside him. Mandy is also there, fussing with her weather station.

Jay walks past them outside. Alonso types furiously on his laptop in his camp chair. Amy is at the edge of the trees, watching the birds through binoculars and taking notes. Miriam and Triquet are down below in some dark cavern, searching for Flavia.

Maahjabeen is down by the water. Jay stands on the redwood trunk looking at her in the distance, trying to decide if he should bother her. Probably not. She isn’t the most friendly person in the best of times and these aren’t the best of times. Also, if he was her, he’d still be totally wracked with guilt about losing Flavia.

But she sees him and to his surprise, Maahjabeen beckons to Jay. He jumps from the log and crosses the beach to her as fast as his aching ankle lets him. “Hey, what’s up? Can I get you something?”

Maahjabeen wears a broad-brimmed sun hat over her headscarf and dark sunglasses. She looks like a movie star trying to go incognito at the Cannes Film Festival. “I can speak with you about this. You will understand and not try to stop me.”

“Ah! Crazy talk! Totally. I’m your boy.”

“I am adding to my list of places to go here. Now at the top it is the sea cave exit. Over there.” She points to the left, the southeast, around the point made of clay and somewhere up that coast. It is the opposite way she had gone before, during the storm. “It is probably hidden from outside so a kayak is the only way to find it.”

“Yeah. That’s your prime sea cave exploration tool, no doubt. Esquibel just gave me the green light to get back on my feet. Well, tomorrow is what we agreed. So you want to just hold off until then I bet we can find it together.”

Maahjabeen shakes her head no. “I’m not quite at that stage in planning yet. Or healing. I won’t be ready to go tomorrow. And listen to you! You are too eager to hurt yourself again.”

“Ha. Look who’s talking. Maybe I’ll just get restless and go discover a cave system under the sub to get lost in instead.”

But that is too much and she falls silent, her mouth a compressed line. Jay is filled with regret. Aw, shit. He did it again. “Sorry. That was out of line.”

“I have an idea.” Maahjabeen studies the impassable breaks. “But it is only if you are a really strong paddler.”

Jay nods. “Kay. Let’s hear it.”

“What if we lash both boats together?”

“Uhh.” Jay can’t see it. “Lengthwise or like side by side?”

Maahjabeen laughs. “Side by side. I’ve been wondering if we can build some outriggers for the kayaks to give them extra stability on the open water. But what could we use as a stabilizing float? I don’t think we have anything disposable in camp. Then it occurred to me when you said we could both go out there together that if the boats are attached somehow side by side—”

“Then they act as each other’s outrigger? Wow, yeah we’d have to be strong paddlers. The added mass would be super tricky.”

“But it might get us over the breaks in one piece.”

“Yeah… Might… If we had something rigid between. And strong enough that it doesn’t just snap in two.”

“And then we can paddle to the sea cave.” Maahjabeen drops her gaze. “And see if Flavia’s body is floating around in there.”

“Aw, come on, Maahj. She isn’t dead. She’s just lost in there somewhere. Triquet can find her. And Miriam is like a world-class expert underground. She’s in good hands.”

Maahjabeen takes off her sunglasses and stares at Jay, offended. “Uh huh. What did you call me again?”

“Maahj? Like short for Maahjabeen? Like a nickname?”

“Don’t do that.”

“Cool. Okay. No worries.”

Maahjabeen sets her sunglasses back in place and stares at the ocean again. “Two days. We heal for two more days and then we try it.” She gives him a rare smile. “Thank you, though, for trying to make me feel better. I do appreciate it.”

Ξ

Pradeep hauls the ten gallon buckets to the waterfall’s pool for a refill. A few times per day the camp goes through an inordinate amount of fresh water. He also brings his pack and a Dyson. At the same point at the same time each day for four days now he’s been sampling the water at a single location. He wants to figure out how to set up a permanent monitoring station, where the microfluidics channels in the sensors are perpetually flushing themselves and giving new readings. He wants a profile of the life forms present throughout the day. In what ways do they wax and wane? Is the severity of the waterfall the only factor?

At the edge of the pond they’ve worn a shallow platform in the mud a handspan above the water’s normal level. He kneels here and submerges the bucket. They’ve stopped treating the water since Esquibel has declared it safe. It’s pure. Delicious too. Now they only regularly monitor it to make sure they don’t contaminate it themselves.

Pradeep dips the end of the Dyson reader into the water and gives it a minute to digest the sample. Then he does it a second time as a precaution and sets the reader aside. He lies down and drinks deeply from the pool. Then he pulls back and regards his shimmering reflection. He hasn’t seen himself in a couple weeks. He looks haggard. Lean and happy. But he really should shave. The few whiskers that lie scattered across his cheeks aren’t even dense enough to be called sparse. And an unruly curl is starting to peek out from behind one ear. He looks like he did on that one vacation they took to visit his mother’s family in Chennai when he was ten. But all in all, not so bad. And everyone here is being so lovely. Supportive. He doesn’t have to keep this ball of anxiety clenched inside him like a fist in his diaphragm. He can let—

Beside him the bushes shiver and a cackle splits the air. A junco in the laurel tree above startles and wings away, cheeping. Pradeep yelps and nearly falls into the pool.

His yelp quiets whoever cackled. After a moment, Triquet calls out, “Hello…?” Their head pokes out from the bushes beside him, in caver helmet, covered in mud. “Oh. We found Pradeep.”

“Praise be.” Miriam’s voice is muffled, deeper in the thicket. “I need to stand.” This is the tunnel to the poolside fox nest she had discovered earlier. It led them out from below. Now they have a legitimate path from surface level to the tunnel complex.

“Where did you come from?” Pradeep hasn’t quite regained his composure. “You gave me a heart attack!”

Triquet pulls themself free of the branches and stands beside Pradeep, dusting their canvas coveralls. But their state is hopeless. They’ll need to be soaked overnight to get all this mud out. “We are the dwarves of the mountain!” they crow. “Long has it been since we have seen the light of the sun.”

Miriam stands, her begrimed face lost in thought. “I don’t know how we can make it functional though. It is such a maze. And this is the tightest tunnel we’ve tried yet. Like I scraped my hip bones kind of tight. It’s like a warren in there, like a giant rabbit warren. Maybe the sub entrance is still the best.”

“Functional?” Pradeep stares doubtfully at the wall of vegetation in front of him, obscuring the cliff from which they emerged. “Like we could have a door to the caves here if we chopped this all back to the cliff face?”

“But what I’m saying is it would hardly be worth it.” Miriam shakes her head, tired and frustrated.

“No Flavia?”

Triquet shakes their head, sad. “No. But we’re being methodical and we’ve only gotten through the bottom two-thirds of tunnels so far. There’s a couple promising ones up top.”

“Seriously? It’s taking that long?”

“You have no idea how confusing it is in there. And we keep coming upon our own twine. We’ve started to annotate it but by the time we come back to it the third or fourth time the labels are just covered in mud. Dark, tight spaces, just looping around and around on themselves. Here. Let me help.” Triquet picks up one of the water buckets and leads the others back to camp. “Time for lunch anyway. I’m starving.”

Jay has already started making pancakes. In a sugar water solution he floats banana chips to rehydrate them. Chewy, but good. He adds more salt. Back when he was a line cook at a ski resort in college he learned just what an unhealthy amount of salt restaurants use in nearly every dish. It gets him compliments about his cooking ever since.

“Smells lovely.” Triquet, looking like they just ran a Tough Mudder race, drops the water bucket at the end of the table. “Now excuse me while I return to the waterfall for a shower.”

“Whoa. Look at you. Yeah, sure. I’ll keep a stack warm for you.”

“You’re a peach.” Triquet trips away, the aches and pains slowly stealing up on them. That was a long morning. Grim. So hopeless. What has become of poor Flavia? How had Triquet so completely messed up ever since the innocuous moment they opened up the deck panel that leads down to the sea cave?

The bambino… Why was the child crying? The mystery of it has cycled around in Triquet’s head a million times in those dark tunnels. Were they lost? Injured? The urgency with which Flavia responded indicated that it was a sharp moment of crisis, not like some steady sobbing from someone who was wandering in the dark. Had they fallen? Why couldn’t Triquet find a hypothetical that would get such a scenario to make sense?

Had someone stolen the child? Their mythical Chinese pilot? With a weary sigh, Triquet pushes their way through the foliage to the pool’s edge, where they primly strip off their clothes and let the icy falls wash all their cares away.

Ξ

It has been two weeks now. The project is one-quarter over. In some ways, it is going better than Alonso anticipated. In some ways, worse. What a time for Flavia to go missing! Right after she sent him a draft of Plexity’s engine, which is the oddest assortment of modules and plug-ins and bespoke code he has ever seen. Cellular automata? Just… why? Ah, well, that’s what happens when you hire a research mathematician to do a programmer’s job.

Most data scientists are big picture thinkers. And Alonso is no different. But he can separate himself from the rest of his mostly theoretical colleagues by busting out his applied maths chops as needed. It is merely the difference between developing a recipe and actually cooking it. He is comfortable in both worlds. What Flavia needs here is fewer ideas and more implementation. She is using Plexity as a testbed for many of her wackiest pet theories, apparently—which is absolutely fine. This is nothing but a grand multidisciplinary experiment after all—but the ultimate goal cannot get lost. So. He will just carve away the fat and inevitably defend his decisions while she rages and curses him in Italian.

Alonso looks up at the dark line of trees hiding her from him. He sighs. Well. As soon as Flavia is found, that is. Then they can fight all they like.

His fingers fly furiously on the keyboard, lines of Perl flowing from him into the machine. He is basically restating his initial attempt, which she had entirely discarded, and adapting it to take the useful ideas she suggested. Oh, she will hate this so much. She is trying to preserve this analog quality throughout the data but she has no idea how much that will defeat all the macro level data science he hopes to do with Plexity. She is only thinking about it locally while he is trying to characterize the entire planet. That fine touch will be nice only at the smallest frames of reference. If she is so excited about it then he will help her find harmonic resonances in the data sets after they reach a trillion inputs.

Miriam emerges from the tunnels again, drained and losing hope. Alonso sets his laptop aside and pushes against the arms of his camp chair, to stand and go take care of her. But his legs still won’t work and he realizes if he does try to stand she will set her own exhaustion aside and help him.

So he remains helplessly seated. Damn and doubly damn his torturers. If he was even six years younger he’d be scrambling through those tunnels more than any of them. “Oye, Novia.”

She crouches at a water bucket, scrubbing the clay mud from her hands. Over her shoulder, she offers a weak smile. Alonso looks like a bewildered castaway in his chair, gray-streaked hair standing straight up. “Still no luck, Zo. But we’re learning. I think the tunnels we just investigated were the first they dug, and have since been abandoned. They are cruder, the wear patterns older, and they lead nowhere. Most just stop. But one tunnel’s path clearly proves my hypothesis that they dug the tunnels with little thought of direction. They were just digging out the soft layers and avoiding the hard. This is more like the behavior of worms than miners.”

He shares a grimace with her. “And no sign at all?”

Miriam shakes her head no. “But there are two tunnels left now. And both are rather large. Flavia-sized. Very promising. We’re just being methodical. I hope it doesn’t cost us.”

“Look.” Alonso points with his cane. “That is nice to see. I wonder what those two could ever find in common.” Esquibel sits on Katrina’s platform beside her, pointing at Katrina’s laptop screen and asking a sharp question.

Miriam stares, flat, at the scene. Her mind is empty. She has no idea what those two young women could find so interesting while Flavia is still gone. All the times Miriam has broken down in tears, alone in a tunnel following a bit of muddy twine, has left her beyond empty. She has unwillingly transitioned over these last two days from a research scientist into a search and rescue volunteer, with no end in sight. “You realize we’ve only seen the tiniest bit of this island, don’t you? If the entire thing is riddled with these tunnels… I don’t know if…” she shakes her head in despair. “I just don’t know where she’s gone. We’ve looked nearly everywhere.”

“Sleep, darling. You are working so hard. There is only so much we can do. And we have so few people who are fit for this work. We need you to be fresh.”

“I’m very hungry.”

“We will feed you. Sit. Sit, and keep me company. Where is Jay? He always wants to do more than he should. Jay!” Alonso calls out in a deep resonant voice and waves his cane.

The bunker’s door opens. “Alonso!” Jay leans out, mimicking the older man’s stentorian delivery. “What you need?”

“Could you do us a favor? Please feed my wife and make sure she gets to bed. That is, if you are not…”

“No no. I’d love to. Playing nursemaid is my jam. Need me to carry you?” He puts a patronizing hand on Miriam’s shoulder.

Wearily she knocks it off. “I’m just hungry. I’m not an infant. Do we have any protein at all?”

“Well. You’re in luck.” Jay fetches one of the five gallon buckets from under the long tables. “Maahjabeen finally gave me the green light to harvest mussels at the shore.”

The bottom of the bucket is filled with dozens of their black and pearl shells. Some are huge, almost the size of her hand.

Miriam nearly swoons. “Oh, Jay! Dearest child! I take back anything mean I said to you. I am your eternal slave.”

Alonso claps his hands. “Ha. I’ve heard that before, Jay. Don’t believe her.”

Jay shrugs. “That’s cool. Not really into slaves anyway. Let me just put a bunch of these in with some garlic flakes and a dash of wine while I get the pasta going. Two shakes.”

He departs as Miriam settles in a chair. “If I lie down I will pass out. What he said sounds heavenly.”

“I hope he knows to make enough for everyone. Now I am famished myself. Oye. Jay…” The young man has returned from the bunker bearing a small plastic tray. “Jay, I think we would all enjoy this meal. Please make as much as you can.”

“How about this.” Jay strikes a Thinking Man pose. “I make Miriam’s first so it’s quick, and when I can I’ll start a big pot that won’t be done for another, I don’t know, twenty minutes?” He bows, presenting the tray to Miriam. It holds a joint, a lighter, and a bottle cap for an ash tray. “This here’s my indica knockout bomb. Just take one or two hits. Remember last time. You’ll be high as a kite for an hour then you’ll sleep like you’re dead.”

“Zo, he’s an angel. An angel straight from heaven.” Miriam lifts the joint and sparks up.

“You always did form unhealthy attachments to your dealers.”

They both chuckle.

Jay hurries once again into the bunker. The pot may be boiling.

Ξ

“Good morning, doll.” Triquet is subdued, in a pair of overalls and a thick shirt. Amy studies the birds, taking videos of the spiraling clusters, brown and black and white, as a band of sunrise flares across the underside of the marine layer and turns the ocean sea-green. Mist rises from the backlit black cliffs. “Any chance you’d care to join me?”

Amy sighs, counting twenty-three pelicans and noting them before giving an answer. This morning she’s seen common murres and Brandt’s cormorants and two black osprey, their enormous wingspans unmistakable against the glowing sky. Closer to the ground, it’s odd to see a redwood grove without so many of its normal birds. Neither robins nor ravens nor crows. Very few songbirds. A few oak titmice root in the undergrowth. Heavens knows how they ever got across twelve hundred kilometers of open ocean. Finally she closes her notebook and smiles sweetly at Triquet. “Anywhere, darling.”

But Triquet doesn’t have the energy to be arch. The search for Flavia has been grueling and hope is running out. “Miriam is still asleep. She needs it. But you aren’t. And I need a second.”

“Oh.” Amy points at the ground beneath her feet.

“Well, more like…” Triquet turns and points at a shallow angle below the earth behind the bunker and the cliff base. “But I can’t just wait up here doing nothing while Flavia’s still…”

“I know.” Amy drops her camera. “I’ll come. Let me just. Um. Get out of these clothes. Ten minutes?”

They meet in the sub a short time later. Amy wears a canvas shirt and jeans that are still wet from being worn down here and washed the night before. She shivers. “Come on. Let’s get to work. I need to warm up.”

Triquet leads Amy through the sub’s first floor, second floor, and then down the tunnel into the muddy crawlspace. They pop out in the culvert, half-hoping to find Flavia here. But it remains empty. They’ve posted an led light here. Amy swaps out its batteries. It shines on a permanent rope emerging from the tunnel they just exited. A sign in a ziploc bag pinned to the earth reads:

FLAVIA

FOLLOW THIS ROPE

TO THE SUB

Before doing anything else, they walk the culvert to its end to examine the sea cave in the hope that Flavia is in there. But it is as lifeless as ever, the waves crashing energetically against the worn concrete piers.

Satisfied that she isn’t down here anywhere, they return to the multitude of tunnel mouths. Small surveyor flags poke out from each one, where twine is tied off. All of them have been so marked except for the two tunnel mouths that gape above. They are divided from those below by a shelf of dull green gray limestone protruding from the earth.

Triquet randomly chooses the tunnel on the upper left. They place a surveyor flag and tie the twine’s end around it, a fat spool hanging from the nylon strap they wear as a belt. “Wish me luck.”

They pull themself upward.

Amy waits, looking up, as the six meters of blue nylon strap connecting them unspools at her feet. Finally she heaves herself into the tunnel, the twine running along a wall clogged with veins of raw rough stone. Soon her fingers are sore from gripping it.

Triquet ahead is having no better luck. It is slow going, weaving between these clusters of stone that shoot through the earth. And they stop to inspect the walls and floor after every step for any sign of Flavia’s passage. After climbing upward at a steep angle for more than twenty meters, the earth gives way to solid stone. But the tunnel slides sideways and then proceeds upward, through a natural water-carved tunnel. It finally rises nearly straight. “Ahh.” Triquet stands at the bottom of a very tall chimney. A tiny bit of indirect silver light, nearly directly above their head, glows, way way up there. “What in the wide world of sports?”

The passage doesn’t look all that daunting though. It is choked with logs and branches all the way up, many of which are solid and provide rungs for a very long ladder. But still. What a death trap.

“What’d you find?” Amy still labors under the shelf of solid rock behind them.

“Well…” Triquet kneels. “The real answer here is to look for her footprints first. Or any sign of passage.” There’s none. The tunnel is dry and mostly stone. The nearest branches and logs look worn, as if many feet had climbed them, but nothing to suggest it was done recently. “It’s a real climb. Like straight up the inside of the cliff. Who knows how high.”

“I’m coming.” Amy scrambles into the bottom of the chimney. It’s close quarters with Triquet. “Sorry if my breath is bad.” She cranes her neck upward. The light filters through the countless branches and logs blocking it. “Whoa… So pretty. But yeah. We shouldn’t climb that. There’s no way that’s safe.”

“I agree. Let’s just report back with news of this one and… I don’t know. I can’t figure out how we might ever actually explore it. I can’t imagine what happens if you fall.”

Amy feels Triquet’s shiver. She rubs their narrow shoulders with her hands to warm them up. Triquet rests their head on Amy’s shoulder. It is a tender, nearly intimate moment. Is this the time she should tell Triquet she’s trans? Now that she’s spoken to Mandy it seems like it’s news most of the team should know, and nobody more than the only non-binary person here. But it would be so very awkward, here in this pit deep underground. Never at work, Amy has always told herself. And this is work. “Let me just back out, my dear Doctor, and you can follow.”

Triquet waits, the chill passing. They peer upward, mind buzzing again. This is a very different form of archaeology here than the Antique Road Show up above. Fascinating. Truly sui generis. Without any other materials available, the natives strategically placed sturdy branches and logs across the wide chimney, braced by natural features. This will require a painstaking investigation. It will certainly need its own whole paper itself.

The strap tugs at their waist. Right. But first, Flavia. What do the Marines say? Leave no man behind? He’s not heavy, he’s my brother? Something like that? “Hoo-ra.” Triquet’s voice is swallowed by the dark. They duck back down under the shelf to follow Amy back the way they came.

Ξ

Miriam opens her eyes. Every bit of her aches, inside and out. Shame and guilt and a slowly rising horror that Flavia might never be found drag on her. But she can’t even lift her head.

When her brother Denny killed himself she was halfway across the world, digging trenches in Ethiopia. She had let him slip away, despite all the warning signs over the years. Even though she’d sent him useless cheery videos whenever she could and helped him with his coursework and even set him up with Hannah from Portsmouth for whatever messy good that did them, it was still far from enough. It had been her responsibility as the older sister to watch out for him and she had failed him. Miriam hauls herself out of bed. She cannot fail Flavia. “I mean, I’m right bloody here.”

Alonso snores contentedly beside her. He’s looking better, his sleeping face clearer. And is he losing weight? He seems less bloated. As dangerous as it is here, Lisica is good for his health.

She laces up her boots and puts on the clothes that are still caked with mud. As she walks down the ramp with her toiletries bag to the long tables, her muscles start to work. Yes, she’s a tough old bird. Constant activity over the years has made her body expect rough living each day. Just a visit to the trenches and a spot of tea, then brush her teeth and off she’ll pop.

It’s as she’s returning from the last of these tasks that Amy and Triquet emerge from the bunker. They are freshly soiled.

“The left side.” Triquet points a weary left arm upward, snaking its convoluted course. “Then up up up.”

“Up?” Miriam places her kit on her platform and secures her caving bag, making sure the water is refilled. “How far up?”

“Who knows. There’s light at the top, but… No sign of her.”

“So that only leaves the last one. I’m coming.”

“Are you sure? You look like you’ve been rode hard and put away wet, honey.” Triquet laughs and squeezes Miriam’s arm to take the sting from the words.

“And you two look like something the cat dragged in.” Miriam steps past them to the bunker door. “Who’s coming?”

They both follow her without a word as Miriam makes her way downstairs. Soon, after all the normal convolutions, they stand in the concrete culvert staring at the eleven tunnel mouths. Triquet and Amy have described to her the tunnel they just explored. They all agree that they hope the final tunnel isn’t like that.

It is not. When Miriam pulls herself up into its narrow opening, it immediately widens into a more comfortable passage, climbing at a forty-degree grade or so. “Oh, praise be.” She is delighted to see that it is all limestone and nearly no mud.

Triquet steps through the narrow mouth to find Miriam kneeling in the tunnel. “Amazing! Did you find anything?”

“Just my first introduction to the true limestone mantle of the island. Look how green! Absolutely microcrystalline. Benthic without a doubt. And this passage is water-worn, over millennia I’m sure. Look, Amy. Tiny fossils. Foraminifera. This is what proves these seas were much shallower at some point in the past. You get much deeper than 4,000 meters in the ocean and calcium forcibly dissolves. So you don’t get limestones in the deep oceans. And as far as I know, this has always been deep ocean here, back to bloody Gondwanaland. So somebody’s models are off. Or rather, everyone’s must be.”

They press on. This passage is generally as large as the concrete culvert below, still rising at a sharp grade. They are able to walk upright quite close together. The passage soon curves up to a bottleneck of spilled jagged stone. “So much calcium in these deposits,” Miriam jabs a rock under her boot with the spike end of her pick, “we could open a chalk factory. So I’m beginning to think this was always an uncharted large shallow platform here in the middle of the ocean. A rogue magma plume probably caused a bubble and then, so close to the surface, it bloomed with life. Reefs in particular. Then after a number of cycles of the reefs collapsing into the crust when the magma bubble stops, then rising again, we get these lovely limestone layers in the middle of the goddamn Pacific Ocean, where nobody expected to find them.”

“Look. Prints.” Triquet kneels at the edge of the cascaded stones. One has a regular imprint of wavy ridges. “Sperry Topsiders or my name ain’t Triquet Carter Soisson.”

Amy blinks. “That’s your full name? Wow.”

“I mean, it’s the same price to change one name or three so get your money’s worth. But I only go by Triquet.”

“I love it.”

“Thank you. But footprints, ladies. This is it. We found her.”

Silently they climb the rockfall and pull themselves up into the next stretch of the passage which continues to rise, doubling back above where they had been. Now they’re avidly scanning the sand on the floor of the tunnel, looking for any more sign of Flavia. But the tunnel floor is too generally disturbed, with nothing conclusive for them to claim as hers.

Another bottleneck makes them climb again. This one features an entire cypress tree that either washed into this tunnel long ago or was somehow placed here. They climb its broken limbs up a long chimney to scramble out onto a short platform. The air is freshening. Light spills from the far end of the tunnel.

They ascend to it. More branches and logs litter this passage, but none block it. Bespelled, they move forward with rising urgency. It is clear what they’ve found before they reach the end. This is a tunnel all the way through the cliffs to the hidden valleys within. There is a passage after all and this is it. The island is unlocked. All its riches are now theirs.

Miriam strains forward, Triquet and Amy no less excited. They don’t even need to speak. The climb is a blur of stumbles and gasps and labored breathing. For a hundred meters they hurry forward until Miriam suddenly stops, raising her hand. “Hear that?”

Triquet and Amy listen. Voices. The easy gabble of a chattering group. More than two, that’s for certain. The voices are indistinct but they aren’t speaking English. It almost sounds like Brazilian Portuguese, lots of vowels in a fluid lyrical cadence. Overlapping sounds. But none of it is angry or distressed.

They cautiously walk forward, alert now. They are perhaps twenty meters from the ragged seam of the tunnel’s exit when the voices suddenly fall silent.

Miriam stops. She shares a worried grimace with Triquet and Amy. They’ve obviously been discovered somehow. But how? And now what? Should they retreat? Move on?

As they have a discussion of silent gesticulations, a silhouette appears in the seam, blocking most of the light. It is a little old man, childlike, with long curly ringlets falling to his waist. He waves his hand in front of his face, as if clearing the air, and then he raises that hand in welcome. “Dobree denda du ya’aak.” His sibilant voice fills the tunnel, then he adds another couple phrases in his singsong chant. As he finishes, a catlike creature steals upward and perches on his shoulder to get a look at them.

The researchers don masks and gloves. “Uh… Hello, mate. We are… uh, we’re looking for our friend.” Miriam looks at Triquet. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just a bloody geologist. You do this. Aren’t you trained in first contact protocols or something?”

Triquet holds their hands up. “This isn’t Star Trek. I’m just a bloody archaeologist. I don’t deal with humans. Just their things.”

It is Amy who hurries forward, hands pressed to her forehead in what she hopes is a universal symbol of peace and respect. “Hi, sir. Hello. It is such an honor to meet you.” She stops at a safe distance and holds her pose. The old man only watches, posture relaxed with all his weight on one hip, as his pet sniffs the air. “That’s a fox. That’s a—a lisica!” Amy points at the animal, her biologist joy overcoming her caution.

“Lisica.” The old man points at the fox. Then a rush of polyglot follows. Amy gave him the impression of knowing his language and now the linguistic floodgates are open. He beckons to them and turns, walking back out into the light.

With an apprehensive look at both the others, Amy edges toward the light. Triquet lifts the blue strap connecting them, thinking if it’s some kind of trap they can yank her back to safety.

After so long underground, the diffuse gray daylight is too much. Amy emerges blinking, wishing she could actually see the world she has finally entered. But she catches just brief snapshots at first: a flat space beside this interior cliff filled with bark longhouses; a crackling fire above which a dozen blackened trout are suspended; a cluster of small people in shifts and loincloths staring at her.

Amy’s hands return to her forehead in Buddhist appeal. She smiles her most beatific smile and walks slowly forward, hoping there aren’t a pair of warriors on either side of her with obsidian axes like Aztec priests. But no, when she looks to either side there is no ambush. Just curiosity.

“Uh. Flavia. My friend. Have you seen her?”

But the nine or ten people only watch her in silence. Now that her eyes are starting to work better she can pick out their fine features and wild range of skin and hair colors. Only a few are golden blond. Others have red hair and the rest have black. But all of them possess long ringlets. Their skin tone ranges from dark brown to ruddy and their faces possess snub noses and pointed chins. It is difficult at first glance to determine gender. She is as tall as the tallest one.

Triquet emerges from behind Amy. “Hello,” they say, waving. “Lovely place. We’re absolutely harmless. Did she tell you?”

Then Miriam emerges. At a loss, she bows to the group. Over her shoulder, she whispers, “Have we found Flavia yet?”

“I was just asking.”

One of the older villagers waddles forward, thin and tough as tree roots. In her gnarled hands she holds a cluster of shells somehow fixed together. She talks as she approaches, a rising and falling cadence that is impossible to follow. The word koox̱ is repeated again and again.

“Did I hear the word ‘American’ in there?” Amy asks.

“I thought I heard ‘colonel.” Triquet holds their hand out for the shells, which the villager is trying to share. “Ah. Ahh.” There is a photo affixed at the center of the shells, making them the frame of a kind of plaque. It is black and white, of a woman with blonde curls. “Yes. Maureen Dowerd. Yes, we know. We know her.”

The crowd erupts, all of them speaking at once. These are known words. They repeat them. “Maureen!” and “Dowerd!” again and again. The chatter begins again from all sides. Others emerge, perhaps thirty in all. The people of Lisica.