Contact: norsebarddk@gmail.com
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DISCLAIMERS:
This action adventure yarn belongs in the Uber category. All characters are created by me, though they may remind you of someone.
This story depicts a loving relationship between consenting adult women. If such a story frightens you, you better click on the X in the top-right corner and find something else to read.
The story contains some profanity. Readers who are easily offended by bad language may wish to read something other than this story.
There is genre-typical violence in this story, some of which is directed at women. Readers who are disturbed by this type of depiction may wish to read something other than this story.
All characters depicted, names used, and incidents portrayed in this story are fictitious. No identification with actual persons is intended nor should be inferred. Any resemblance of the characters portrayed to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
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NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR:
Written: July 9th - 23rd, 2015.
- Thank you very much for your help, Phineas Redux :)
- This is Book 1 of 2 of the Beware The Island Of The Mu-Kwanda -series.
As usual, I'd like to say a great, big THANK YOU to my mates at AUSXIP Talking Xena, especially to the gals and guys in Subtext Central. I really appreciate your support - Thanks, everybody! :D
Description: En route to the Marquesas in the South Pacific, a bad storm sends the luxury yacht owned by Carol Ann Lawrence and her dominating husband, the former Air Force Captain Charles Lawrence, off course into uncharted waters. When they discover a mysterious, bluish-green island that seems ripe for exploration, they head ashore with a small team of sailors - but as the dream of a tropical paradise turns into a nightmare, Carol Ann learns the hard way that some things are better left alone… like the island of the Mu-Kwanda.
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CHAPTER 1
May 29th, 1953 - the Pacific Ocean. Several hundred nautical miles south-east of Hawaii en route to the Marquesa Islands.
The merciless sun shone down upon a myriad of tiny, rolling waves that spread out for hundreds, if not thousands of miles to all corners of the world. The stark blue body of water was peaceful and undisturbed save for the white wedge that cut across the surface.
At the head of the wedge, the one-hundred and seventy foot wooden luxury yacht Empress of the Pacific rode the water with grace and elegance. Designed by her owner, the Empress had been built with no expenses spared in one of the finest ship yards in San Diego with the sole purpose of awing all those who saw her.
The boat was a study in extravagance. The forward and aft quarters as well as the bridge in the center were painted in off-white that wouldn't absorb the sun. The rail, the port holes below deck and most of the extravagant design features were made of brass, and the entire hull from the main deck down was mahogany of the highest quality.
Two exhaust pipes at the back sent out a constant burble and a faint, dark haze produced by the slow-stroking diesel engines as they generated just enough power to the screws for the graceful yacht to cruise across the water at a pleasant twelve knots.
On the flat foredeck just shy of the boat's bow, a large parasol had been put up to create plenty of shadow for the owner of the Empress who was lounging on a reclining sunbed. Wearing a Panama hat and dark sunglasses that were matched perfectly with his loose, white shirt and navy blue shorts, the broad-chested, ruggedly handsome Charles William Frederick Lawrence the Third snapped his fingers and held out his hand.
Within five seconds, a hostess they had hired during their stay in Honolulu put a full glass of a faintly-green liquid into his hand. He sampled the mojito and nodded his approval. Taking another sip from the drink, he cast a curious, and somewhat annoyed, glance at the empty sunbed next to him. "Why is my wife late getting up here?" he said in his trademark dark timbre that had made the knees knock on many a young girl when he had been an officer in a USAAF Fighter Wing stationed in England during the war.
"I can't say, Captain Lawrence," the dark-skinned hostess said, curtseying to her employer.
Charles grunted and lowered his sunglasses down onto his nose to give the native woman a full dose of his dark-brown eyes. "Well, find out. I'm paying you to be our hostess… so host."
"Yes, Captain Lawrence," the Hawaiian woman said. She performed a quick curtsey before she hurried away from the foredeck.
She never made it all the way down to the master cabin before she intercepted Carol Ann Lawrence who came the other way wearing a pair of pink sunglasses, a yellow sarong that she had wrapped around herself twice to reduce the effect of the sheer fabric on the demure bathing suit she wore underneath, and finally a wide-rimmed, floppy straw hat that covered her long, strawberry-red hair.
"Oh, Mrs. Lawrence," the hostess said, curtseying deeply, "your husband requests your presence on the foredeck."
Carol Ann offered their helping hand a polite, little smile. "Thank you. I was just on my way there." The six years Carol Ann had lived in the United States hadn't been enough to fully erase her native English accent - she had lived in London and then in a small village close to Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire for the first nineteen years of her life - but the R's and the T's were beginning to sound American rather than British.
When the dark-skinned hostess smiled back, Carol Ann shoved her bare feet into flip-flops and strolled through the narrow hallway up onto the foredeck. The sun's murderous rays made her fair English skin tickle almost at once, and she wrapped the sarong even closer to make sure she wouldn't get a sunburn.
She had barely sat down and swept her legs up onto the sunbed before her husband let out a long, disappointed groan. She knew exactly what was wrong. They had been married for six years, and during that time, she had learned to interpret each and every one of his groans; good and bad. This one was bad.
"Sweetie," Charles Lawrence said and ran his free hand down his wife's arm. "Why aren't you wearing the expensive garment I bought you in Honolulu? It was such a good fit."
Carol Ann drew a deep breath and turned her head to look at her husband. The battle was already lost, she knew that, but she would still try to put off the inevitable for as long as she could. "But darling, it's so revealing… the crew would look, and-"
"And I want the world to see the gorgeous creature I married. Mmmm? Put it on," Charles said and leaned back on his sunbed. Sipping his mojito, he didn't worthy the yellow sarong another glance.
Carol Ann's lips became a pair of thin, worried lines in her face. She raised her sunglasses to give her husband a pointed glare with her hazel eyes, but even the sincere look of worry on her face made little impression on the former USAAF Captain. It was pointless to resist or even argue, so she nodded and slipped back down to the cabins.
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Five minutes later, Carol Ann reappeared wearing a white, two-piece bathing suit commonly referred to as a bikini. She was thankful her husband hadn't bought the smallest model for sale at the beachfront store, but the acres of skin on display nevertheless made her feel uncomfortable.
Sitting down on the reclining sunbed, she closed her legs and held them to the side to be less exposed. A harrumph from her husband made her stretch out her legs and cross them at the ankles instead. The hostess soon arrived with Carol Ann's favorite refreshment, a Club Soda with a slice of lime, but a sense of happiness was much harder to come by despite the heavenly surroundings.
It didn't take long before some of the male members of the crew found various tasks that needed to be carried out at or near the boat's foredeck. Carol Ann could feel their eyes roaming across her legs, her bare mid-riff and her breasts, and she shivered despite the searing heat.
When she glanced to the side to see if her husband had noticed the unwelcome attention, she realized with a sinking feeling inside her that he was basking in it. To him, the whole trip was an exercise in showing off his trophy wife, the twenty-five year old beauty with the charming, English personality and the wholesome girl-next-door looks that were so popular at the time.
Carol Ann swallowed down a bitter lump and closed her eyes behind her pink sunglasses. It didn't block out all the lustful gazes she could feel on her skin, but it helped.
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Over the course of the day, the clear blue sky turned increasingly hazy until the color of the heavens resembled steel gray rather than baby blue. With the creation of the cloud cover, the sea changed color from stark blue via a filthy green to the final tone of the day: a somber gray that did nothing to hide the fact that the ancient Pacific Ocean had become the final resting place for countless sailors and airmen who had lost their lives in the naval battles in the region during the Second World War.
Carol Ann stood at the brass rail and held onto her sarong that she had wrapped around her shoulders when the temperature had dropped sufficiently to hide the wretched bikini. She cast a worried glance at the gray clouds that appeared to tower over the Empress . As the wind picked up and began to whip her hair around, she couldn't help but feel they were headed for trouble of a magnitude beyond what even her dearest, and supposedly all-powerful, husband could control.
"Mrs. Lawrence! Mrs. Lawrence," the dark-skinned hostess said, tugging at Carol Ann's sarong. "Please, you must come below now. There's a bad storm coming."
"I know," Carol Ann said and tore herself away from the ominous cloud formations above. She offered the hostess a smile before she realized she didn't even know her real name. "I- oh, I'm so sorry… I don't know what to call you?"
The hostess smiled back, and this time it was far more genuine than the regular, well-rehearsed gestures. "My name is Elissa Helani, Mrs. Lawrence. Please, we must-"
"I'm coming, Elissa," Carol Ann said and put her hand on the small of the hostess' back to guide her along. The two women used the steep staircase next to the foredeck instead of the double doors that had already been secured. As they reached the plush carpet in the hallway outside the cabins, a member of the crew closed and sealed the hatch they had used.
Down below, the view out of the brass port holes onto the choppy water was even worse, and Carol Ann hurried along the hallway to get to the door to the master cabin. With her hand on the door knob, she turned around and locked eyes with the hostess. "Elissa, you may come in with me if you wish. My husband and I will just sit and read while we endure the bad weather. I could use someone to talk to…?"
"I'm honored by the offer, Mrs. Lawrence," Elissa said and performed a small curtsey, "but I'm afraid it wouldn't follow the proper protocol. I shall stay in my own cabin next to the galley until you call for me."
"Oh, but surely-"
Carol Ann never made it further as the door to the master cabin was opened which yanked the knob out of her hands. Charles stuck out his head and shot the hostess a dark glare. "That'll be all. Thank you. Carol Ann, are you coming or what? We need to lock the door."
When Elissa Helani hurried past Carol Ann looking down at the carpet, the matter had clearly been exhausted. Carol Ann sighed and stepped across the tall threshold.
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Like the rest of the boat, the master cabin was a rich, extravagant affair predominantly held in burgundy and gold. The plush carpet on the floor was impractical at sea, but it simply had to be there; similarly, the curtains that could be drawn to cover the port holes were made of a fabric that didn't mix well with salt water.
The original oil paintings adorning the walls of the cabin depicted tall ships and special events from several centuries' worth of naval history, and the furniture looked like it could have come from the captain's quarters of the Titanic. The king-size, four-post bed pushed up against the bulkhead was equipped with a mosquito net that could be rolled down on all four sides whenever the Empress of the Pacific entered tropical waters.
Right now, the graceful boat was in troubled waters, and Carol Ann had to put her hands on the furniture on her way over to the bed in order to walk straight. An unpleasant rocking motion had already set in, but she knew it would get far worse if the contents of the leaden skies would reach them. Sighing, she wrapped the sarong even tighter around her and sat down on the edge of the bed. When a chill crept up her calves, she rubbed them with the other foot.
"If you're cold, why don't you get changed?" Charles said as he sat down in his favorite easy chair which was placed next to a round smoking table. He crossed his legs at the knee and shot his wife an expectant look.
Carol Ann blushed and stood up. Looking away, she began to unwrap the sarong which let the white bikini back into sight. The clasp at the back of the top proved reluctant to release. Her frantic motions didn't help, but they were stilled by Charles who suddenly appeared at her side.
"I got it," he said huskily into her ear as he worked the clasp with his warm hands. The white cloth fell away which left her topless.
Carol Ann shivered and put the bikini top on the bed. Before she could reach for the briefs, someone knocked on the door to the cabin.
'Captain Lawrence? I need a word about the approaching storm,' a male voice said in an English that carried a foreign accent.
Charles let out an angry grunt at the untimely interruption, but Carol Ann took full advantage of it by snatching up the bikini top and hurrying away from her husband. In two steps, she had turned the corner into the large walk-in closet and closed the sliding door behind her.
"Come in, dammit!" Charles growled from the cabin. When he realized the doors were locked, he stomped over there and let the crewmember inside.
Inside the walk-in closet, Carol Ann breathed a sigh of relief and rested her forehead on the sliding door. She couldn't wait to get back home to the mansion in California. There, she and her husband rarely saw each other during the day, but on the boat, they were never apart.
Throughout the entire sailing trip, his eyes had never left her body. It wasn't love, it was raw lust - and he wasn't just looking, he was devouring her. All the magazines told her she should be flattered to possess the ability to attract and arouse her husband even after six years of marriage, but she just felt like a piece of meat.
Shaking her head, she took off her bikini briefs and slipped into a pair of regular, full-size bloomers. While her husband spoke to the man who had knocked, she quickly donned a brassiere suitable for the warm weather, and finished up getting dressed by stepping into a pair of peach knee-length shorts and pulling a white, breezy blouse over her head.
She slid the door aside and stepped back into the master cabin. The white-clad captain of the Empress of the Pacific , Spyros Antonakis, had a worried look on his face that she didn't like at all.
When Spyros, who was a wiry, earnest man in his mid-forties, caught a glimpse of Carol Ann, he nodded and offered her a brief smile before he turned back to Charles. A Greek national, Spyros' bronzed skin and black, curly hair fit in perfectly with a life lived on the seven seas. "Captain Lawrence," he said in a somber tone which his East-Mediterranean accent turned even gloomier, "we may have to return to Honolulu before the edge of the storm reaches us. If we turn back now, we can outrun it."
Charles grunted out loud and waved his hand in dismissal. "Nonsense, Mr. Antonakis. The Empress was designed to withstand any storm. We're only on the first leg of our grand Pacific adventure so there'll be no turning back. Remain on course, but seal all hatches and tie down the rest."
"Yes, Captain Lawrence," Spyros said and nodded at his employer before he turned to face Carol Ann. He cast another worried glance at the young woman. "Mrs. Lawrence, the sea will get very rough out here in the middle of nowhere. I suggest you prepare yourself for an unpleasant evening."
The news made Carol Ann wring her hands and gulp audibly. She had developed a pair of firm sea legs over the years, but a storm was a different matter to their regular calm-water cruises. "Thank you for the advice, Mr. Antonakis," she said quietly.
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It took another ninety minutes for the storm to arrive, but when it hit the Empress of the Pacific , its ferocity was worse than anything Carol Ann had ever experienced. Wave after wave crashed against the hull of the boat and threw it about like a toy in a bathtub. The angry wind screamed along the graceful superstructure, and strong gusts made the port holes creak and groan from the pressure. Endless cascades of rain pelted down upon the entire boat creating a soundscape akin to frantic snare drum solos being played up on the foredeck.
Carol Ann had taken a sleeping pill and had gone to bed, but Charles sat in his favorite easy chair seemingly unaffected by the horrendous conditions. Now and then, he sipped his Bourbon and turned a page in the book he was reading.
The sleeping pill wasn't providing the desired effect for Carol Ann, and she turned over onto her back. Letting out a long groan, she hurriedly reached up to push off the silk sleeping mask. "Oh, God… won't it ever st- Oh!" she said, cutting herself off with a brief squeal when the boat performed a nasty rock and roll against a crashing wave.
"Not for a while. We need to ride it out," Charles said and turned a page in his book. Looking over at his wife, he seemed to ponder a nicer way to spend the time. A wicked, lustful smile flashed across his lips as he put away the book and got up from the chair. "Of course, I know just the thing to make the hours fly past."
Carol Ann gulped as she happened to look at her husband's navy blue shorts. The bulge meant business, and she closed her legs in a hurry underneath the blanket. "Darling, please… Charles… please, I can't make love now. Not in this bad weather… I'm queasy and… and…"
"Shhh. You know how the raging elements set my blood alight," Charles said and sat down on the edge of the bed. Smiling at his wife, he reached up to pull down the blanket to reveal the salmon-colored silk nightgown she wore. "I'll make it worth your while, I promise," he husked, shooting her a lustful gaze.
When Carol Ann didn't reply beyond a worried frown that appeared between her eyebrows, he let his eyes roam down her lithe body until they reached the bare thighs that were too good to ignore. He placed a warm hand high on the inside of Carol Ann's left leg and began to caress the smooth skin with his thumb.
Arousal was the absolute last thing on Carol Ann's mind. As the hand slid further up her thigh, she reached down to still it. "Please, darling… I w- I can't while the weather is this bad. Later… I promise we can make love later. Tonight, when the storm has passed. Please…"
Charles cocked his head and shot his wife an annoyed glare. To begin with, he kept his hand exactly where it was, but after a few seconds, he pulled it back. "Fine. But I'm holding you to it," he said and got up from the edge of the bed.
Nodding, Carol Ann let out a quiet sigh of relief before she pulled the blanket up underneath her chin. "Of course, darling. You know I love to make love to you. I'm just queasy from all this rocking."
"Mmmm," Charles mumbled as he returned to his easy chair. With the prospects of carnal pleasure evaporating, he settled for pouring himself another Bourbon and picking up the book.
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As the hands of time crept forward, the ferocious storm grew weaker though it tried to sink its teeth into the Empress for as long as possible. Waves still crashed against the hull and sheets of rain still poured off the panes in the port holes, but all in all, they had made it through the worst part.
Carol Ann had taken another sleeping pill to combat the inclement conditions, but all the drug had brought her was a state of constant, unpleasant sluggishness that didn't translate into actual sleeping. The murderous rocking grew weaker and turned into an odd, rhythmic rolling. For a split second, her drowsy state led her to believe her husband had already taken her offer literally, but she found herself alone in bed.
Breathing a sigh of relief, she put her head back down on the pillow and observed Charles who appeared to be asleep in the easy chair. They had drawn the curtains over the port holes so she was unable to see the color of the sky, but a quick look at her wristwatch proved it was just after midnight.
Something wasn't quite right, but she couldn't figure out what until she put a hand on the bed's wooden frame. It didn't vibrate, meaning the engines weren't running. Being adrift in the South Pacific wasn't something she would relish, so she sat up in bed and tried to listen for any activity from the crew.
She had just swung her bare legs over the side of the bed when someone knocked hard and fast on the door to the master cabin. Shrieking, she dove back under the blanket and pulled it over her head.
Charles was pulled from his slumber when the insistent knocking was repeated. Upon realizing what it was, he jerked upright which sent the book and the empty whisky tumbler onto the plush carpet. "What the hell? Who is it? And why are you bothering me at this hour!?"
'It's Spyros Antonakis, Captain. We have a problem.'
"Oh, for Pete's sake… that brainless wop," Charles said and rose from the chair. He cast a brief glance at his wife before he stomped over to the door to let in the Captain of the Empress for the second time that evening. "Now what, Mr. Antonakis? You came highly recommended, but perhaps it was a mistake to hire you?"
The barb hardly registered on Spyros' face; he was too busy looking away from the lump on the bed and the bare feet that stuck out at the bottom end of the blanket. "We've had to shut down engine number two, Captain. The crank casing was damaged by one of the rolling motions. It seems there wasn't sufficient lubrication for-"
"I'll give you lubrication," Charles growled, putting his hand on the doorjamb to verify the captain's words. "But they're both off?"
"Yes, we shut down number one as well to check-"
"Wasn't the engineman at his post?"
"He was, Captain Lawrence, but the storm-"
"The storm affected us all, Mr. Antonakis. In various ways," Charles said and looked back at the lump on the bed. He grunted and turned back to the captain of the Empress . "How long have we been adrift?"
"Not long. However, the radar says we're close to an island or an atoll that isn't on any of the charts. It's a short distance away on our port side, east-south-east… only about two miles or so."
The news made Charles scrunch up his face and take a good look at the Greek captain. "An island? In the middle of nowhere?"
"Well… yes."
"The atolls here have underwater reefs surrounding them. We need men measuring the depth at all times. See to it, Mr. Antonakis. I don't want anything to happen to the Empress . And get number one restarted so we aren't drifting!"
Spyros Antonakis nodded and left the master cabin in a hurry. Closing the door, Charles let out a long, slow sigh. He looked at his wife's bare feet that were pulled inside the blanket in an unfortunate mirroring of the lack of the pleasurable activities that could have taken place at that very moment. "Carol Ann, I'll be on the bridge for the time being. I'll be back later. Don't forget our agreement."
Carol Ann pulled down the top of the blanket so she could see her husband. "I won't, darling… I'll be waiting for you," she said with a certain amount of honey in her voice. When the door closed behind him, she let out a sigh and plopped her head back down onto the pillow.
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Later in the evening, Carol Ann flicked a switch to turn off the single, protected bulb in the ceiling as she came out of the small bathroom connected to the master cabin. After cleansing herself thoroughly to remove every physical trace of the love-making she had endured at the hands of her husband, she had donned the peach shorts and the loose, white blouse. Now she needed some fresh air to purge everything from her mind as well.
On her way over to the door that led to the hallway, she came to a halt to look at Charles' naked - and snoring - form sprawled on the king-size bed.
He was handsome and well-built in every sense of the word, and he wasn't violent or crude in bed, but he simply couldn't satisfy her. He had promised he would make it worth her while, but, of course, he hadn't. It didn't help that he rarely lasted longer than ten minutes, but even in the few cases where he did, she felt nothing no matter how hard he grinded against her. She had to fake everything; every cry, every sensual sigh, every exaggerated release or whispered utterance of his name to keep him pleased with her.
A common buzzword of the time was 'frigid,' but Carol Ann wasn't. When the time was right, when the mood hit her, she could work herself into a state that Charles was unable to reach despite his best efforts. During those pleasurable moments, the beautiful fantasies that played in her mind's eye saw her making love to women.
She always felt mortally ashamed when her releases came at her own hands and from her own desires: like Charles often said, it was her solemn duty to devote herself to her husband. Self-satisfaction was a cardinal sin for a woman.
Sighing, she took the sarong and wrapped it around her shoulders. With a final look at her naked husband, she slipped out of the master cabin and tip-toed down the hallway to the double doors.
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Up on the foredeck, the air was fresh and invigorating. The last of the storm clouds had moved further north, and the inky black sky was home to a myriad of twinkling stars. The temperature obviously wasn't as stifling as in the daytime, so Carol Ann pulled the sarong tighter around her.
She took a deep breath of the fresh air and let it out slowly. The surrounding waters had returned to its eternal calmness, and the boat was gliding on top of the dark sea. Up on the bridge, two powerful searchlights had been turned on in addition to the regulatory running lights, but the bright white cones that cut through the darkness didn't appear to be pointed at anything in particular.
The gentle breeze sang in the antennas and made the brass bell on the outside of the pilot house jingle. The crisp, harmonic sound joined the creaking wood, the splashing waves and the occasional metallic clonks from the extended anchor chain to create a symphony at sea.
A smile slowly spread over Carol Ann's face. She was a landlubber-girl at heart, but this kind of sea-faring adventure she could live with. Once she had filled her lungs with the salty air, she tried to look into the darkness to see the mysterious island Spyros had spoken of, but she was unable to see anything at all beyond the boat's brass rail.
Slow footfalls behind her made the smile fade from her face. She was half-expecting to feel her husband's hands on her behind, asking if she wouldn't come back to bed for more, but the touch never came. Instead, a sigh was heard which was quickly followed by the click of a lighter and an orange glow from the tip of a cigarette.
Spyros Antonakis came into view wearing navy blue pants, a white shirt and a blue sailor's cap. The Greek shuffled along the pathway next to the rail, holding the lit cigarette in the palm of his hand while he scouted over the black water. His sixth sense made him spin around and stare wide-eyed at Carol Ann who was standing above him.
When she noticed the man's surprise, she bared her teeth in embarrassment. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Mr. Antonakis… I didn't mean to startle you," she said quietly so they wouldn't disturb the rest of the crew. "I just needed some air."
"Well, you did startle me," Spyros mumbled and took a long whiff from his strong-smelling Greek cigarette. Exhaling, the cloud of pale blue smoke that escaped his mouth wafted over the sea at once. He licked his lips and gave the wife of his employer a quick once-over from the legs up.
"May I join you down there?" Carol Ann said and moved over to the edge of the foredeck.
"Of course, Mrs. Lawrence. Hang on, I'll help," he said and put the cigarette in his mouth before stretching out his hands so he could grab the woman if she needed a helping hand.
Carol Ann didn't - she simply jumped the three feet down onto the wooden planks to land gracefully next to the captain of the Empress of the Pacific .
The two people were roughly the same height, and she was thankful for that. With her husband being more than eight inches taller than she, she always felt like a doll or a little child whenever she walked next to him. Spyros was a different story - she could look him in the eye, and she did. "Mr. Antonakis, where is the island you mentioned to my husband? I've been trying to find it, but I can't see a thing out there!"
"Well," Spyros said and took another whiff from the cigarette to hide a brief smirk, "that may be because it's on the port side of the vessel… and we're standing on the starboard side."
"Oh… so it's…"
"It's over on the other side, yes. We can only see an outline, though."
Carol Ann smiled at the captain, pleased that he didn't laugh at her like her husband would have had she made such a fundamental mistake in his presence. "I'd still like to see it if I may."
"But of course. Follow me," he said and shuffled along the pathway up towards the bow of the Empress . Once there, he followed a similar pathway down the other side of the foredeck. He finally came to a halt and pointed the glowing tip of his cigarette out over the ocean. "There. You see the outline?"
Carol Ann narrowed her eyes and tried to penetrate the darkness, but she was unable to see anything aside from a shapeless, black blob that seemed to stick out of the water in the middle distance. "Mmmm… no. I can't see it. I mean, I do see something, but…"
"That's it. The island that isn't on any of our charts."
"Oh! Fascinating. How come it isn't?"
"Well… because no one has found it yet," Spyros said and took a whiff from the cigarette.
Blushing, Carol Ann was glad the darkness covered her acute embarrassment. "I guess that makes sense."
A minute or so went by in silence while the two people looked out at the pitch black blob that was supposed to be an island. Now and then, a final reminder of the storm came to them in the shape of a wave that rolled a bit harder against the boat's hull. The waves created a splash down below but were soon gone.
"You're from England, aren't you, Mrs. Lawrence?" Spyros said and took a final whiff of his cigarette before he threw it over the rail. "I can hear it on your accent."
"I am, yes! Lately from a small village east of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire."
"How far is that from Liverpool or Newcastle upon Tyne? I've only ever been to those two ports in England."
"Oh… well, it's not too far from Liverpool, but Newcastle is pretty far, actually. Although… I suppose distance is relative," Carol Ann said and made a sweeping gesture at the wide open expanses surrounding them. "Compared to out here, everything is just around the corner back home in old Blighty."
Spyros chuckled and tipped his sailor's cap at his charming companion. "Not to mention my home country of Greece, eh? Oh, I must be on my way. Captain Lawrence has ordered my crew to uphold a strict watch until daylight. I can't be in the same place for too long."
"But… what on earth for? What dangers could possibly reach us out here?"
"Now, if I had the answer to those questions, Mrs. Lawrence," Spyros said with a sly grin gracing his features, "I'd be the one owning the yacht, not the one toiling away for the Gent who does. I wish you a good night."
"Good night, Spyros," Carol Ann said with a chuckle.
When the captain of the Empress had moved on, Carol Ann yawned and turned back to cast a final glance at the mysterious island off their port side. Her breath hitched and she came to a dead stop when a faint, orange light could be seen on the island. Before she had time to rub her eyes, the pinpoint of light was gone. "Oh…" she mumbled under her breath. "Now I'm seeing things. I better go back to the cabin before Moby Dick shows up to swallow us whole…"
*
*
CHAPTER 2
At seven thirty the next morning, the sea surrounding the Empress of the Pacific was calm to the point of being serene. The sun had long since risen above the eastern horizon and was already sending its baking warm rays down upon the boat and the people on it.
The low angle of the sun made the water around the boat shimmer like silver, and a good pair of sunglasses was a necessity. Carol Ann put on her pink frame the moment she stepped out of the bathroom freshly scrubbed and ready for whatever the day would bring.
First up, she was to join her husband at the breakfast table - and Charles was a stickler for tradition when it came to the dress code at mealtime - so she wore a classic o-neck blouse with horizontal, navy blue stripes over a pair of off-white, full-legged sailor's pants that were pleasantly loose and baggy.
She briefly returned to the small bathroom to fix her hair, but it only needed a little attention. Buns were chic, but loose was the most practical in an environment that could reach the high nineties at noon.
An insistent growl from her stomach made her leave the master cabin and stroll along the plush carpet in the hallway. She was soon at the short flight of stairs that would take her half a deck down. At the bottom of the stairs, she nodded a brief good morning to one of the Filipino chamber maids who came the other way carrying an armful of clean sheets.
The dining cabin was located obliquely above the galley just past the halfway point of the Empress of the Pacific . Inside the cabin, a staircase led down to the galley itself to speed up the delivery of the meals made there.
Following Charles' wishes, the cabin was lined with large, square windows that offered a perfect view out onto the ocean or the port they had docked at. Shutters could be drawn to seal off one window at a time in case of bad weather or nosy neighbors.
When Carol Ann entered the dining cabin, the delightful scent of fresh coffee assaulted her nostrils. Elissa Helani, their hostess from Hawaii, stood ready with the rest of the serving staff: three adult waiters plus a young teen out to learn the ropes as a cabin boy. The sounds of pots and pans from below meant that the cook was still working on putting the finishing touches on the breakfast.
The square table had been set for two with a white tablecloth, silver cutlery, fine glass tumblers and several small jars containing tropical jam. A glass of pineapple juice and a cup of coffee stood next to Charles' plate that carried a slice of buttered toast with the crust cut off in accordance with his preferences.
Carol Ann smiled at Elissa who returned the gesture in kind before she performed a deep, respectful curtsey at her mistress. The waiters and the cabin boy followed the hostess into a bow.
Charles was already present, wearing a dapper khaki safari suit that made him look faintly like an extra in a Tarzan movie. As Carol Ann walked behind her husband, she trailed her fingers along his neck before she leaned in to offer him a kiss. "Good morning, darling," she whispered, caressing his freshly-shaven cheek. "Thank you for last night. You were wonderful."
A possessive grin spread over Charles' features as he reached out for his wife to pull her into a bigger kiss. "I told you I'd make it worth your while," he said loud enough for all to hear. "Now, where's the cook with the breakfast? I'm starving."
Carol Ann smirked and shuffled over to her own chair at Charles' right. Sitting down, she crossed her legs in a lady-like fashion. At once, Elissa Helani came to her side and did a little curtsey.
"What would you like this morning, Mrs. Lawrence?"
"A cup of tea and two slices of toast, please, Elissa. Medium as always. One buttered, one not. Oh, and will the cook perhaps make those delightful pancakes we had yesterday morning?"
"He certainly will, Mrs. Lawrence," Elissa said with a smile.
"In that case, I'd like two… no, three. Yes, three of those, please. And the small vial of syrup. Thank you."
While Elissa curtseyed and sent the cabin boy down the steep staircase with the order, Charles grunted and looked at his wife's slender figure. "Where you put it all is beyond me. But it's good you work on your stamina. It will be an exciting day."
"Why is that, dearest?" Carol Ann said and fluffed out her napkin while she waited for the order to be processed. When Charles didn't speak at once, she reached for the porcelain jug of pineapple juice that stood on the table and poured herself a healthy amount of the sweet liquid.
"Because I've decided we're going ashore."
Carol Ann's hand that held the tumbler of juice stopped halfway between the dining table and her lips. She lowered it slowly and turned to look at her husband. "Going ashore? On the mysterious island?"
"No, on the Australian Gold Coast… of course it's on the island, silly girl," Charles said and took his cup of coffee. He sipped it wearing a casual expression like he had just read aloud from the sports pages instead of delivering a momentous announcement.
Furrowing her brow, Carol Ann turned around and looked out of the large window behind her. If she craned her neck, she could just make out the waves breaking at the reef by the island. The rest of the mysterious, even mystical, presence appeared to be a thick, impenetrable carpet of bluish-green trees that stretched from the shore and up a mountainous cone. At the top of the cone, bare, dark-gray rock glistened in the sun. "But there could be diseases over there… or wild animals… or both."
"Probably," Charles said and took another bite of his toast. Arching an eyebrow, he gave the hostess a pointed stare like he wasn't satisfied with the food.
"But why?" Carol Ann said and turned back towards her husband.
Charles let out a sigh and wiped his mouth on a cloth napkin. "Sweetheart, you ask far too many questions today. There's an island right there waiting to be explored. Or perhaps even claimed, who knows. I've studied all the charts we have, and it's not on any of them. There's a possibility it's one of the northernmost islands in the Marquesas and thus inhabited by savages… but think of the potential for greatness if we're the first westerners to land there. Out here, it's finders keepers, Carol Ann."
"What on earth would you want with an island… and one in the middle of bloomin' nowhere?!"
"Language, dear. We're not wharf rats," Charles said and sipped his coffee.
Though Carol Ann didn't say anything, it soon became clear that Charles' scathing message had come across - a pair of ungainly red blotches blossomed on her cheeks. She glanced at Elissa and the waiters who all looked at anything but their female guest out of sheer embarrassment.
Pushing away the toast which wasn't to his liking at all, Charles moved out to the edge of the chair and took his blushing wife by the hand. "Carol Ann, countless profitable things could be done to, and around, an island such as this one. Most of which would go clean over your pretty little head so I won't bore you with them, but suffice to say there could be plenty of money involved. Money that would sweeten your life as well."
Carol Ann nodded with the blushes still stinging her cheeks.
"Good," Charles continued. "Once we've finished eating breakfast, Mr. Antonakis and I will prepare the yacht tender and perhaps one of the dinghies. Be ready to go on a little adventure at, oh… a quarter to eleven. We'll get the cook to create a picnic basket so we can make the most of our thrilling day."
"I can't wait," Carol Ann mumbled, drowning her sorrows and worries in the freshly made, chilled pineapple juice.
-*-*-*-
Five minutes to eleven, Carol Ann stepped into the luxury yacht's tender which had a permanent mooring spot on the aft deck of the Empress . After putting a reed picnic basket and a cardboard box with a pair of brand new hiking boots down into the gap in front of the back seat, she sat down on the bench up front and shuffled around to find a good spot on the burgundy velvet upholstery.
Like the yacht, the twenty-foot long, open-top tender was an exercise in excess. Beyond the burgundy upholstery, it had a polished, wooden steering wheel similar to those found in pre-war Duesenbergs, and the windshield protecting the passengers from the headwind and the inevitable splashes of salt water had brass highlights and a string of colorful miniature pennants attached to it. The brass theme continued on the dashboard below the windshield where the compass and several other instruments were housed in the golden metal.
While the crew attached transport wires to metal eyes in four spots along the craft's hull, Charles jumped in and got settled behind the wheel. The ruggedly handsome man looked dapper and suitably heroic in his khaki safari suit, Carol Ann had to give him that.
"All right," Charles said strongly to make the crewmembers pay attention to him, "we're ready to be launched. Get the motor winch going."
Spyros Antonakis gave his employer a thumbs-up and pulled at a lever on the motorized winch that controlled the davits at the other end of the transport wires. The electrical motor whined as it pulled the wires taut and eventually raised the small craft off the two sturdy trestles it had been standing on.
"Sweetie, is the picnic basket secure in the back?" Charles continued, looking over his shoulder as the yacht tender swayed back and forth in mid-air.
Carol Ann threw her husband an annoyed, sideways glance at the fact he had thought of the condition of the lunch before asking about her safety, but she nodded and let out an affirmative grunt.
By the time the craft cleared the hull of the Empress and came into the open, Carol Ann became too pre-occupied to complain. The breeze that ruffled her hair also threatened to blow off the white sailor's cap she was wearing. It was just a tad too large for her since it belonged to Charles, but she had borrowed it from his closet to prevent the sun from cooking her brains over the course of the day.
The davits finished their work of carrying the elegant craft down towards the surface of the calm sea. A mighty splash was heard when the yacht tender finally touched down. The transport wires needed to be detached, but Charles had no intention of dirtying his hands on such a trivial task. Instead, he waited for four of the Filipino crewmen to launch the dinghy and steer over next to the tender to release the hooks.
Once the craft had been separated from the Empress , Charles pressed his thumb on the starter button which kicked the small inboard engine to life. When the screw was running smoothly, he turned back to Spyros who had joined the four sailors in the dinghy. "Mr. Antonakis, we'll head ashore now. I'll wait for you at the reef. I depend on you to find a safe passage through so the tender won't be damaged."
"Very well, Captain Lawrence," Spyros said and tipped his cap.
Charles never replied beyond a grunt. Instead, he pushed the throttle lever ahead and let the twenty-foot craft gain speed.
---
Carol Ann forgot all about the condition of the picnic basket as her husband let the yacht tender crash into every wave he could find on their way to the bluish-green island. The bumpy ride seemed to amuse him greatly, but Carol Ann was less impressed - especially as she had to hold onto her cap and her pink sunglasses for dear life.
Going at such speed, the tender gobbled up the two-mile distance between the Empress and the island in a hurry, and the rough ride soon came to an end. When they got close to the spot where the waves were breaking at the first reef, Charles switched off the engine and let the craft drift towards the disturbed water. He leaned over the side to gauge the depth and came to the conclusion that it would be possible to cross over the reef even with the expensive tender.
Carol Ann let out a sigh of relief and let go of her sailor's cap. Up close, the island looked even more ominous than it had done on their way there. Although the lagoon they were aiming for did have a wide, sandy beach, the dense vegetation that consisted of tall palm trees and thick shrubbery seemed to block every natural passage.
It didn't take long for Spyros Antonakis and the four crewmembers to glide their dinghy up next to the tender. The fact that the Greek and all four Filipinos were carrying rifles made Carol Ann furrow her brow and narrow her eyes down into slits behind her sunglasses.
"Charles… why are Spyros and the others armed?" she said as she turned towards her husband.
"You said it yourself, darling. There may be dangerous animals on the island. Better safe than sorry. All right, Mr. Antonakis! Show me the way!"
Spyros nodded and steered the dinghy towards the most likely spot to cross the underwater reef. It didn't take the experienced sailor long to zig-zag through the currents and treacherous, hidden dangers. "This way, Captain! It's easier than it looks!" he shouted once he was in the clear.
"If we scrape the bottom, I'll dock him a month's wages," Charles growled as he started the engine. This time, he took it more gingerly, but the reef didn't pose as big a problem as he had expected. With plenty of panache - and an arm resting on the side of the boat to show that he was in complete control - he steered the yacht tender across the disturbed areas and into calmer waters.
---
Carol Ann tried to take in as much of the romantic surroundings as she could, but she couldn't quell the little voice at the back of her mind that said they were asking for trouble by visiting the mysterious island. The closer they got to the sandy beach, the more insistent the voice got. When Charles once again turned off the engine and let the tender slide up onto the fine, gray sand, the voice practically screamed in her ear to get away while they still could.
The worry manifested itself as a knot in her stomach, and all thoughts of lunch on the beach were unwelcome. Shielding her eyes from the strong sun, she turned her head slowly to take in the entire stretch of the lagoon before she went anywhere.
As such, the lagoon wasn't all that different from those they had seen on Hawaii. The sand had the same color as on Oahu, the palm trees were of a similar build, and the dense shrubbery appeared identical as well. The smell was different: the air on the mysterious island was fresher like it had never experienced westerners and all their pollution.
That said, a sudden whiff of wood smoke entered Carol Ann's nostrils. The familiar scent made her furrow her brow even further and stare at the trees lining the sandy beach. It was the second time her mind had played tricks on her following the phantom sighting of a bonfire the night before - whether or not she should heed the warnings, she wasn't sure. "Wonderful," she grumbled as she rose from the burgundy bench and stepped over the side of the tender. Her sandaled feet splashed into the crystal clear water that had been heated by the sun. "I'm losing my mind. What's next? Will Bluto the Caveman show up and help us cook the bangers?"
She realized too late she had spoken so loudly that Charles had overheard her comment. He stood on the other side of the small craft with a puzzled expression on his face, but she broke out in a disarming smile to show she was merely jesting.
Charles grunted and moved onto the beach itself.
Sighing, Carol Ann rolled her eyes and took the two items from the back bench.
-*-*-*-
The sand, the sun and the surf were perfect companions to the picnic that was about to take place on the beach. After Carol Ann had found a good spot with a nice view over the Pacific Ocean, she spread out a quilt on the warm sand and arranged a royal feast for two. The cook had been helpful in packing all the necessary utensils, so she reached into the reed basket to take two plates, two wine bowls, two sets of cutlery, a cooler, and a bottle of white wine wrapped in oilskin to protect the fragile container.
A short distance behind her, the palm trees creaked in the gentle breeze, creating a fascinating backdrop to the admittedly romantic scene. Charles was still busy speaking to Spyros Antonakis who had set up a temporary camp a bit further down the beach with the four Filipinos, so Carol Ann sat down on the quilt and wrapped her arms around her legs while she waited.
The view over the ocean was magnificent and perhaps a little bit intimidating. Sitting on the warm beach on a strange, tropical island in the middle of nowhere, there was no doubt that a human being like herself was but a grain of sand in the grand theater known as the World. Everything her life had, or would, amount to was hopelessly irrelevant compared to the eternal cycle surrounding her; the surf breaking on the reef, the sun warming the sand, and the wind making the palms creak and groan had all been there for eons, and would continue for further eons after she was gone.
Carol Ann snapped out of her dark thoughts to smile at her husband who finally came strolling towards her. When he was close enough, she took out the bottle of chilled white wine and placed it in the cooler so it was ready. "Oh, darling," she said as she brushed a few grains of sand off her plate, "isn't this beautiful and romantic? Just the thing to brighten my day."
"I knew it would be," Charles said and sat down opposite his wife. Without hesitation, he took the wine bottle and yanked it open. "Some wine?"
"Oh, yes, please," Carol Ann said and held up her glass.
After Charles had filled that and his own tumbler, he put away the bottle and looked at her through hooded eyes. "Mmmm. You're the most magnificent creature I've ever encountered. If you weren't mine already, I'd move the heavens and the earth to have you."
"Oh… oh, goodness me," Carol Ann said and fanned herself. She glanced shyly at her husband who hadn't been that romantic since their honeymoon in 1947. Then, they had spent two weeks in a high-class holiday resort for the rich and shameless on the west coast of California overlooking the Pacific, so perhaps it was the body of water that brought out those emotions in him. "I… I love you, darling," she said, sending him a little finger-kiss.
"I love you too, my sweet girl. Let's eat." Smiling at his wife, Charles reached into the picnic basket and removed the top layer of ice cubes wrapped in cloth so he could get to the opening course: the crab salad. After that, they'd enjoy juicy cantaloupes wrapped in thin slices of ham, and the dessert would be petit d'eclairs , chocolate profiteroles with a whipped cream filling.
---
During the picnic, they had heard a few animal calls from the jungle - a monkey, according to Charles - but lately, the single animal had been joined by another whose calls were deeper and more intense.
When the unseen animal let out a drawn-out roar that echoed among the palm trees, Charles chuckled darkly and emptied his tumbler of wine. "I'll bet that's the king of the jungle. He needs to abdicate… there's a new ruler in town. Me."
"I doubt it'll take that lying down, darling…"
Charles let out a burst of laughter that did indeed remind Carol Ann of the call she had just heard from the supposed king of the jungle. "Ah, love… sometimes, your naiveté is charming. That beast won't have any say in the matter! Look at that plateau up there, for instance… do you see it?" Charles said and pointed some distance further up the beach.
"Yes…?"
"That's where the administrative building for my island resort will be put up. A log cabin created by the palm trees surrounding us. That beast up there roaring in the jungle may think it's the top dog now, but even that thing can't escape the advances of man. Of me!" Charles said and thumped an index finger into his chest. "Thirty or forty laborers will be able to clear or at least thin out this section of the jungle in no time. We've yet to see the interior of the island, of course, but I'm thinking a five-storey, five-star hotel. Can't you see it, darling? Tennis courts… shuffleboard courts… swimming pools… an indoor stage for lounge concerts… a dock for a seaplane flight service from Hawaii for the well-off. We could host beauty pageants with Hollywood movie stars and starlets to provide the glamour. Like the French Riviera, only grander!"
Carol Ann gulped down the bitter lump that had formed in her throat. Over the course of the picnic, she had found herself falling in love with Charles all over again. He had been charming, he had been kind, he had been attentive to her needs and requests; he had been all those things that had attracted her to him when he had been a dashing air force Captain during the war back home in England. But now he displayed all the attributes that made her turn away from him in the present.
Sitting there, planning the destruction of the serene island with a smile on his face, he was the very image of the greedy landgrabbers and profiteers that she was sure would ruin the Earth before too long if mankind wasn't careful.
"But darling," she tried, turning around to face her husband, "we don't know yet if the island is inhabited. If there are natives here, don't you think they would object to all those plans?"
Charles shook his head in a casual fashion. "If there are people here, they'll be brown savages like those indigenous eccentrics on Hawaii who spend their days dancing in grass skirts for dimes. We're the first westerners here, I can feel it in my bones. This island is ours for the taking… and by God, that's exactly what we'll do. Finish up here, we've spent enough time talking."
With that, Charles got to his feet and left his wife to deal with the remains of the picnic.
Carol Ann sighed deeply and looked out over the ancient Pacific before she began to collect the various items and put them into the reed basket.
-*-*-*-
Twenty minutes later, Charles and Spyros had carved a passage through the dense shrubbery using a pair of machetes that had been brought along in the dinghy. Despite Carol Ann's quiet protestations, the small team of seven explorers set off from the beach to head inland.
She had changed into the boots she had brought along, and the first few dozen yards made her glad she had taken the time to put on the heavy things. It was tough going at first, but as soon as they cleared the shrubbery, the density lessened and became more easily negotiated.
If nothing else, the forest floor itself was soft to walk on; a result of the recent storm that had torn a great deal of the massive leaves off the many palm trees. Here and there, palm trunks had given up the unequal struggle against the forces of the wind and had fallen where they stood.
The wounds were still too fresh for mother nature to have reclaimed them, but it was clear it wouldn't last long. In one spot, a species of monkey had already built some kind of nest in the triangle next to the stub. Carol Ann stopped dead in her tracks and stared wide-eyed at one of the animals scurrying across the fallen palm trunk to get out of the way of the intruders. She didn't know one type of monkey from the other, but the small, agile animal had had a long tail, a dark-brown, furry body and a comical pattern of paler fur around its eyes.
She realized she was falling behind the others, so she pulled herself away from the spectacle and hurried along the trail made by the boots worn by her companions.
Wherever they went, colorful plants and flowers greeted them. Some were white and resembled orchids; others were blue and purple like pansies, and others again were bright, two-tone mixes of reds and oranges above tall, knobbly stalks that were dark-green in color.
The latter always stood in clusters of four or five with their bell-shaped heads wide open like they were young birds waiting for their mother to return with a juicy caterpillar. While Carol Ann was watching, an insect akin to a dragonfly got too close to one of the colorful flowers. Almost like they were intelligent beings, the flowers turned with the flying insect, tracking it, following it, luring it inside with their sweet scent. Once it got too close, the trap was sprung and their mouths closed around the dragonfly. "Carnivorous plants…" she whispered, in awe over what she had just seen.
---
Further along the trail, she came to another dead stop as the call of the animal Charles had dubbed the king of the jungle cut through the air. Up close, the bassy roar sounded like it was produced by a vast creature, but regardless of its size, Carol Ann wasn't interested in the least in ending her days as the plat du jour to a frightening beast. Gulping nervously, she hurried along the trail to be closer to the protection of the rifles carried by the men.
She ran so fast to catch up she nearly bowled Spyros over when their paths met. The wiry Greek jumped a foot in the air at the surprise attack, and he let out a string of choice words in his native tongue. Then he realized that it hadn't been a rampant wild boar but a fleet, and highly embarrassed, woman.
Panting, Carol Ann lifted the sailor's cap to wipe a few beads of sweat off her brow. She had never been one for humid conditions, but that was exactly what faced her the deeper they went into the jungle which was more akin to a rainforest once they got beyond the fresh breeze at the coast. "Did… did you hear that roar?" she said, gesticulating at the jungle.
"We did, Mrs. Lawrence. Come along, we don't want to keep your husband waiting."
Exactly on cue, Charles came to a halt at the head of the team of explorers. He shielded his eyes to look towards the back of the line before he uttered the inevitable comment: "Stop that tomfoolery back there, Mr. Antonakis. We have places to be. I can see another plateau at the foot of the mountainous cone some six hundred yards or so ahead of us. We'll take a rest there."
Carol Ann sighed and offered Spyros a polite smile as an apology. The Greek chuckled at her and turned around to continue along the trail that had grown into a gentle incline as they got closer to the foot of the small mountain.
-*-*-*-
The plateau they were aiming for turned out to be farther than it had appeared. After an exhausting nine-hundred yard trek through the jungle where they seemed to go up, up and up for most of the distance, the group of seven tired explorers finally stepped up onto a naturally created, flat slab of stone that would provide a viewing platform over a great deal of the island. With the sun baking down upon the rock for the entire day, the slab was hot to the touch, and it carried a smell that was vaguely sulfurous and entirely unpleasant.
Above them, the mountainous cone which was free of vegetation seemed to reach for the sky another short mile or so to the east of their position. Looking down the side of the cone opposed to the one they had used to climb up to the slab, the eroded horseshoe-like outline of a volcanic crater could be seen. Though it had suffered from the effects of the harsh weather conditions across the millennia, it was still possible to spot it, especially if one squinted.
The warm, humid breeze did its best to cool off the reams of sweat that poured down Carol Ann's neck and body. It wasn't an exaggeration to say she needed a break quite badly. After wiping herself down with a handkerchief that had already become filthy, she tried to look for a shady spot where she could rest her weary legs.
Spyros caught it at once and grabbed her arm before she could sit down. "No, Mrs. Lawrence… you can't sit here. The rock is too warm and you'll only burn your behind. Can't you feel the searing heat through your boots?"
"Yes," Carol Ann said with a sigh, "and I can feel the fatigue in my calves, too. Not to mention the fact my feet are killing me… the new hiking boots are stiff and uncomfortable. All right… if I can't sit, may I have some water, please?"
"Of course," Spyros said and took one of the three canteens they had brought with them from their supply dinghy. "Now, Mrs. Lawrence, you need to take easy sips, don't chug it down. It's still cool so your stomach will rebel if you drink too quickly in this heat."
Carol Ann scrunched up her face and gave the Greek a somber look. Nodding, she took the offered canteen and proceeded to take tiny sips to satisfy not only her thirst, but the man watching over her.
Handing it back to Spyros, she turned around and let her husband - who wore the expression of a child in a nickel candy store - be for the time being. Since they were above the crowns of most of the trees, the island once again carried the same bluish-green color they had seen from the Empress and the yacht tender on their way towards the beach. Nothing stood out, save for the occasional splash of color when one of the furry monkeys zipped along from tree top to tree top.
Although she had heard squawks that could come from parrots, she hadn't seen birds of any kind during their trek through the jungle. Why that was, she had no idea, but a wild theory of the winged creatures simply avoiding the rude trespassers did cross her mind - she couldn't blame them.
They hadn't seen too many terrifying insects of the creepy-crawly-kind either, apart from a cobweb between two palm trees that was so large a pony could get stuck in it. Fortunately for Carol Ann's peace of mind, the web had been empty. They had encountered several dragonflies identical to the one that had ended its days in the colorful carnivorous plant, but they weren't too threatening. Now and then, she had heard frantic buzzing that made her think of hornets or horseflies, but she hadn't seen any.
Charles was busy sharing his grand plans with all and sundry over at the other side of the slab, but Carol Ann had little interest in joining that particular discussion. Instead, she shuffled along the warm rock to take in as much of the island as she could before they had to turn back to the beach. Her husband spoke so much, and so loudly, that most other sounds were blocked out, but in a rare break in the stream of words, a familiar sound reached her ears.
Her jaw fell down to her chest upon hearing the sound. It had been there, plain as day, but now it was gone. She spun around to check if it had come from one of the others in the makeshift expedition, but they were calm.
Gulping hard, she waved at Charles to make him shut up in case the sound returned, but he wasn't paying attention to her. She moved back two steps to be in the same position she had been in the first time, but she couldn't pick up anything beyond Charles' talking. She tore off her pink sunglasses and stared wide-eyed down between the palm trunks, but the sun glared so hard over the unprotected rock that it was no use.
A sense of rampant anxiousness washed over her that went straight to her gut. Pressing a hand to her stomach, she stumbled back from the edge and hurried over to Charles. "Darling! Darling, I heard a cough! I heard someone coughing!"
"What?" Charles said, clearly frustrated at being cut off in the middle of explaining his grand plans.
"I heard someone cough! Just now… from somewhere down the slope we used to get up here!"
"Carol Ann… sweetie," Charles said and took his wife by the arms to pull her close. With the back of a hand, he tested the temperature of her forehead like he would a small child. "You're warm. Probably dehydrated. Remember to drink water so you-"
"No! No, Charles, I heard someone coughing! Down among the trees…"
Charles shook his head and looked around at his fellow explorers. "Anyone of you coughed? Mr. Antonakis, did you hear anything?"
"I didn't, Captain Lawrence," Spyros said truthfully.
"I'm telling you, someone coughed!" Carol Ann said strongly, staring daggers at the men around her. A few of them wore that lopsided, overbearing smile that men occasionally wear when they don't want to speak their mind about the woman in their midst. "We're not alone here, Charles… I think we should go back down to the beach in a hurry. We were safe there."
Sighing deeply, Charles pulled his wife in for an awkward hug that didn't seem appropriate for the situation. "Carol Ann, we already spoke about the possibility of brown savages here. I still think you heard something else than what you think you did, but if there is an indigenous tribe here, they'll be no match for our rifles."
"Charles… I know what I heard," Carol Ann said into her husband's broad, manly chest. It annoyed her no end to be pressed up against the warm, sweaty body in front of all those people, but she knew she couldn't resist without causing grave embarrassment for her husband. In the end, she stayed where she was and waited for Charles to release the grip.
It happened later than she had hoped. When he finally let her go, she took a step back and wiped her brow with the filthy handkerchief that was already moist from her own sweat.
"Well, well, well," Charles said and made a final tour of the stone slab to look at his new possession. "I do believe the Lawrence family has just acquired a tropical island! Quite extraordinary… Mr. Antonakis, break off a large twig from that piece of shrubbery there, will you?"
Spyros Antonakis looked down just below the slab and found the bush Charles was referring to. Jumping off the plateau, the Greek went over to the greenery and yanked at the twigs long enough to break one off.
Charles took it and moved into the center of the slab where he had found a small crack in the surface just large enough to stick the twig into. Beaming, he reached into a pocket of his safari suit and found a monogrammed handkerchief that he proceeded to tie to the twig with two knots. "There!" he said, taking a step back from his creation. "It's official, gentlemen. With the Lawrence family standard flying proudly over this island, we have claimed it. Oh, I think we should christen it while we're here. And what better name than Lawrence Island?"
At the far side of the slab, Carol Ann scrunched up her face at her husband's antics. Though he did possess several negative traits, he had never displayed signs of such rabid megalomania before. It didn't become him, and she didn't like it one little bit. "Congratulations, dear. How nice. Can we go back down to the beach now… please?" she said, once again wiping her brow and her neck. "The sea air was so refreshing down there…"
"Yes, let's go back. I need to get aboard the Empress so we can contact the authorities. We shouldn't wait too long. We've found the island… others can too," Charles said and stepped off the slab. He was already on his way down the first part of the slope before he remembered he had forgotten something vital. "Mr. Antonakis, look after my wife, will you? The descent will be far quicker and I don't want anyone to lag behind."
"I shall, Captain Lawrence," Spyros said and put a calming hand on Carol Ann's elbow. The Greek offered her an apologetic gaze that was responded to by a grunt and a pair of rolled eyes.
*
*
CHAPTER 3
Carol Ann knew something was wrong less than ten minutes into their return trek. Though their forest surroundings looked very similar to the trail they had carved with their heavy boots, the palm trees they passed were all wrong - or to be precise, were pointed in the wrong direction. Her fears were confirmed when they walked past a cluster of giant specimens of the red and orange carnivorous plant that she was certain hadn't been there when they went the other way.
Goosebumps broke out all over her body when she realized the bell-shaped heads of the plants followed her as she moved past them. A sickly sweet scent emanated from them that was meant to lure unsuspecting insects - or blondes - into their traps. Drawing a sharp breath, she upped her pace and kept her eyes glued to the trail so she wouldn't trip and become a pickled afternoon delight for the colorful flora.
Moving on, they continued their exhausting trek through terrain that was alien to her. She kept a lookout for the cobweb that could detain a pony, but didn't see it anywhere. At one point, she thought she recognized a fallen tree, but when they got close, she could see the fractures in the wood displayed different patterns compared to the one she had seen earlier.
She wasn't the only one who had noticed things were amiss. Although she didn't speak the language, she could hear the Filipino sailors talk amongst themselves in worried tones. One of them took his rifle off his shoulder and worked the bolt action in case they would run into something hideous.
"Spyros… Spyros, wait up," Carol Ann said to the Greek who was walking ten paces ahead of her. When he slowed down and looked over his shoulder, she took off in a jog to be at his side. "Spyros, I think we're going the wrong way… this isn't the trail we used to get to the plateau. We haven't been here before."
Spyros looked around at the palm trees with an expression on his face that said he didn't agree with her. "Are you sure? One section looks pretty much like-"
"Yes," Carol Ann said with a small growl escaping her throat, "I'm not quite that stupid, thank you. Among other things, we went through a bend that was shaped like an elbow on our way up-"
"Uh… we did? I can't remember."
"Trust me, we did. But we haven't been through that part yet on our descent… though we should have seen it by now. We're going in the wrong direction. I mean, we're still going down so we should reach the flat part leading to the beach eventually, but who knows where we'll find ourselves in the meanwhile…"
The Greek sailor smirked and came to a halt. He looked behind them and did a slow spin to take in the full view of their surroundings. Palm trees, large leaves, dense shrubbery, more palm trees, colorful plants, buzzing insects, even more palm trees - "You could be right, Mrs. Lawrence," he said and rubbed his mouth. Large beads of sweat trickled down from his black, curly hair, but he reached up and wiped them away with the back of his hand.
"I am right, Spyros! Ask the Filipinos… they know, too."
"Who's going to tell your husband?" Spyros said and pointed his thumb at Charles who was pressing ahead up front like he hadn't noticed anything being wrong at all.
"I am," Carol Ann said and took off in a jog to catch up with the self-appointed leader of the expedition. Moving past the sailors - who looked at her like she had lost her mind - she waved at her husband who as usual didn't pay attention to what she was doing. "Charles… wait. Wait, please… darling, I need a word."
Charles groaned out loud and finally came to a halt. "Sweetie, we're trying to-"
"I know, but we're going the wrong way," Carol Ann said when she caught up. "Look at these palm trees… they're far smaller than those we passed going the other way… and not only that, but they're tilting in the wrong direction."
"Darling," Charles said, using a tone of voice that didn't even try to hide its patronizing streak, "of course the palm trees tilt differently. It's because we're going in the other direction."
The corners of Carol Ann's mouth twitched at the scathing comment, and she glanced at Spyros and the four sailors in the hope of getting some moral support. Even as she did so, she knew it was futile. None of the men wanted to get on Captain Lawrence's bad side. "Charles… I know that. And I'm telling you we're going in the-"
"Like you heard someone coughing before? No, darling, we're on the right trail. Don't worry. During the war, I flew from Germany and back to my base in England with a broken compass and a shattered windshield. I managed to find the airfield in one piece, didn't I?"
"Well, obviously, but-"
"No buts today, sweetie. We're on the right trail," Charles said and caressed his wife's cheek. "Mr. Antonakis, let's move out!"
Carol Ann swallowed hard and put her hands akimbo. When the sailors moved past her, they all wore the same lopsided, overbearing smile they had worn up on the slab of rock. She managed to score a small victory when they couldn't hold her sharp glare - they all looked away from the green fire that shot out of her eyes. "We're still going in the wrong direction," she mumbled when she fell in next to Spyros.
---
Thirty minutes later, the endless stream of dirty words fit for a wharf rat that burst out of one Charles William Frederick Lawrence the Third, Esq., proved Carol Ann right. They had found the ocean, but not the beach - instead of the warm sand, they were standing at a precipice. A few yards ahead of the tips of their hiking boots, a two-hundred foot drop went straight down to a rocky coastline they hadn't seen before. Far below, the relentless waves crashed hard against the rocks which kicked up a constant spray of little droplets.
The Empress of the Pacific wasn't anywhere in sight out on the bright blue waves which meant they were looking east or north-east. The mountainous cone loomed large to the south of their position so it was clear they hadn't traversed the island as such, but that didn't help them get any further either.
None of the sailors had any interest in getting close to Captain Lawrence considering the mood he was in, so they stayed well back and spoke amongst themselves in hushed tones that fit well with the gloomy situation.
Carol Ann sighed and threw her arms in the air. "Charles, we obviously need to go back the same way we came out here," she said when she crossed the final distance between herself and her husband, "and this time, we should take great care in following our tracks."
A grunt was all that came out of her husband once the stream of dirty words had died down. Leering darkly at the dead end, he had annoyance written all over his face. "When we get back here with a felling crew, the first thing we need to do is to put up road signs. If we don't, they may end up getting lost for days," he said and crossed his arms over his chest.
Carol Ann really had no comeback to that, so she settled for nodding and putting a warm hand on Charles' arm. "I just hope we won't end up getting lost for days," she said after a while. "We don't have that much water left… and I'm not spending the night on this island. That's final."
"I agree," Charles said in a rare moment of quiet sincerity. In the brief time it took him to utter the two words, a sheen of worry was projected in his eyes. It couldn't, and didn't, last long. A moment later, his usual pompous self returned with a vengeance. "All right. Mr. Antonakis, we're going back the same way we came down here. And pay attention to where you're going! My wife is tired. We need to find the right trail or you may end up carrying her on your back."
Carol Ann almost let the identity of the person who had dragged her along on the expedition against her wishes be known to the world, but she bit down on her tongue and kept it all inside. She couldn't do anything about the little growl that escaped her throat, but Charles didn't notice - as usual.
-*-*-*-
Another half an hour was spent traipsing fruitlessly through the dense, inhospitable jungle, but by a sheer stroke of luck, they crossed the trail they had made earlier in the day when they had been headed for the plateau.
For once, it had been Charles who had paid attention to his surroundings, and he let out a triumphant roar rivaling that of the beast dubbed the king of the jungle when they found the unmistakable pattern of one of Carol Ann's brand new hiking boots in a soft part of the forest floor.
Squatting down while the others took a much-needed break, Carol Ann traced the imprint with an index finger. "Thank God…" she mumbled and let out a little sigh. She glanced to the right, down the original trail, and did in fact remember a few of the palm trees. Much to her satisfaction, the palm trunks were now tilted in the right direction.
Spyros came over and crouched down next to her.
Carol Ann smiled at him and tapped the ground. "Looks like we went off in the wrong direction altogether back at the plateau. Like I said, mind you. The original trail is at a ninety degree angle to the one we've created now. I can't begin to describe how lost we actually were."
Chuckling, the Greek tipped his sailor's cap. "You were right, Mrs. Lawrence. I'll never crack a joke about women's lack of a sense of direction again."
"Thank you. It's impolite to crack jokes about women, full stop," Carol Ann said and dusted off her hands. She got to her feet and made a slow spin to take in the sights.
"I'll remember that," Spyros said and followed her up.
Around them, the jungle seemed to come alive. They could hear several calls produced by the monkeys with the pattern of pale-brown fur framing their eyes. Some of the calls were screechy, others were softer, while others again seemed to form sentences of sorts.
Carol Ann wiped her sweaty neck with her handkerchief, but the cloth was already so filthy she put more grime on her skin than she took off. She furrowed her brow as the animal calls continued to roll back and forth. Now and then, she spotted one of the monkeys zipping up or down a palm trunk, but when she had them in sight, they never said anything.
She was about to mention that odd fact when Charles strolled over to his wife and Spyros with the last remaining canteen. "I wish those monkeys would keep quiet. They're giving me a headache with all that incessant howling. They didn't howl this much when we came up the hill… what's gotten into them now?"
"I can't say, Captain Lawrence," Spyros said and looked around the jungle.
As if on cue, the monkeys fell silent.
"Ah! Much better," Charles said and took a sip from the canteen. Once he had swallowed it, he handed the metal canister to Carol Ann who took a greedy sip as well.
The sip nearly went down the wrong pipe for Carol Ann when a loud, intense roar blasted through the jungle seemingly not a hundred yards from where she and the others were standing. She let out a brief cry which sent a few drops of water splashing down her chin and onto her striped blouse.
Everybody jerked back at the sound, and the rifles were swung off their shoulders in a hurry. "Hold your fire, men," Charles said and took back the canteen to put it on his belt so it was safe. He and the others stared in all directions to find the beast producing the roars, but the jungle revealed no clues as to its whereabouts.
"Charles…" Carol Ann croaked, "we need to get back to the beach in a hurry… whatever that thing is, it sounds like it's angry with us."
The words had barely left Carol Ann's lips before one the Filipinos released a wild, terrified scream from somewhere in the jungle surrounding the expedition. The rest of the team spun around to see what had happened, and noticed - much to their surprise - they were a man short.
"Who's screaming? Who's screaming?!" Charles roared, hurriedly moving towards a palm tree for protection.
Carol Ann's tired mind had grown numb from the shock so she didn't know what she should do, but the palm tree her husband was hiding behind certainly looked inviting. Moaning out loud over all the hardships they had been through, she ran over there in a flash and dove down behind the trunk.
Spyros Antonakis whipped up his rifle and swept the entire area without seeing the man who had screamed. He barked a few commands to the three remaining Filipinos to get the details. "Captain!" he said once the sailors had filled him in. "Captain! Ramón went to take a leak… he's the one screaming!"
"He better not have pissed on anything valuable!" Charles growled, smacking the palm trunk with his fist.
The sound of someone - or something - barging through the shrubbery going at high speed made Charles spin around and stare in that direction. His face contorted into a horrified mask at the sight, and he shielded his wife's eyes at once.
Carol Ann squealed and tried to break free of the hands that covered her face but found them to be too strong. "Urgh! Charles! What's… what's the meaning-"
"I'll explain later!" Charles cried, staring wide-eyed at the sight of Ramón returning in such a panic that he hadn't had time to button his fly. "You! You there! Tuck in your worm, you barbarian! My wife is present!"
At first, Ramón seemed too panicky to listen, but he finally did get everything back inside while he spoke at a hundred miles an hour to the other sailors. He gesticulated wildly at the jungle and was clearly wanting to get back to the yacht tender and the dinghy in an almighty hurry.
Charles finally released his grip on his wife's face. "There are certain things a married woman simply should not see. Those barbarians. Serves me right for not hiring westerners…" he mumbled, moving back from the palm trunk.
Carol Ann growled out loud and wiped down her clammy face with her filthy handkerchief. Shaking her head, she stomped over to Antonakis and the others to get an explanation for the whole mess. "Spyros, I demand to know what on Earth is going on here!"
"Ramón saw a pair of eyes behind a bush. Pale-brown, human eyes. He says he saw a caveman, but…" Spyros said in a voice that carried a stronger Greek accent than usual. While he spoke, he never took his eyes off the jungle surrounding them.
"Oh, God," Carol Ann said and spun around. An entire army of goosebumps riddled her back and everywhere else, and she could almost sense the caveman's eyes on them - who knew, he could be sizing her up that very minute to figure out which of his pots he should use to cook the smallest of the trespassers.
"A caveman?!" Charles boomed. "I suppose he had a pet dinosaur too! What a load of horse manure!" He wiped his sweaty brow with the palm of a hand in a manly posture, but only Carol Ann noticed the hand of the self-appointed leader of the expedition was actually trembling.
"I believe him," Carol Ann said, hurrying over to the jittery Ramón to give his arm a comforting squeeze. The young, dark-skinned Filipino looked worried, but found time to offer her a nervous smile. "I heard someone coughing before. I know I did. And… and down on the beach, I could smell wood smoke. And last night, out on the Empress , I saw an orange flash from a bonfire. There are people here, Charles… a native tribe of some sort."
"Nothing but brown savages! Like I've said countless times already," Charles growled, looking at the members of his team. "Still… we've found the trail back to the beach. I suggest we use it. Move out… on the double!" With that, Charles stomped off down the original trail. Ramón and the other sailors followed him in a hurry.
Carol Ann let out a deep sigh and looked at Spyros whose facial expression proved that he was slowly getting fed up with Captain Lawrence's martial ways.
The inhospitable jungle around them became too threatening with only the two of them remaining, so Carol Ann and Spyros set off in a slow jog to catch up with the others.
-*-*-*-
As the expedition resumed their trek towards the beach, the animal calls all around them grew in intensity and aggression. The monkeys had turned to shrieking like a pack of unhinged devils which drove Charles and the others into a slow, then a fast jog down the trail to get away from them.
The palm trees, the shrubbery and the colorful plants flew by in a blur which made it difficult for the explorers to remain on course, but slowing down seemed suicidal. Looking over her shoulder with raw panic blossoming inside her, Carol Ann thought she could see human-sized shadows following them at a distance, but the possibility of her simply creating nightmarish visions in her mind due to the frightening environment they were in was so high she didn't want to tell anyone.
Her brain started to blank out as a result of the high humidity and the lack of water, but Charles carried the remaining canteen up at the front of the small team, and she couldn't catch him.
Now and then, the king of the jungle added its two cents' worth to the conversation by letting out a bassy roar, but the crowning moment came when the easily recognizable sound of many drums began to echo through the palm trees. The booming drums grew in intensity as the explorers picked up the pace. "Charles! Charles! The cavemen! They're coming!" Carol Ann cried.
"Run faster, woman!" came the predictable response.
"I bloody well can't in these damned boots!"
Spyros fell back to give Carol Ann a helping hand, but she swatted him off her arm with a growl.
From one moment to the next, another bassy roar was heard ahead and to the right of the explorers. It seemed to come from just beyond a cluster of palm trees that stood so close it was impossible to see what lurked behind the trunks.
Though the fleeing team made quite a racket on their way down the slope, a series of crunching, crashing sounds could be heard from beyond the cluster of palms. The animal that was responsible for those sounds had to be human-sized - if not larger.
"Oh, hell!" Charles cried up front. "Turn left! Left! We need to get away from that beast!" - He had barely issued the order before he broke away from the safety of the trail and headed for a denser part of the jungle.
"Turn left?!" Carol Ann cried and threw her arms in the air. "He's fallen off his bloody rocker! Now we're going off the trail again!"
When the monkey calls and the drum beat turned even more aggressive behind them, the time for arguing had been and gone. Growling out loud, Carol Ann left the trail behind and dove through the hole in the shrubbery carved by her husband, the Filipino sailors and Spyros who held his rifle ready at all times.
The drums were even louder on the other side of the next row of palm trees, so Charles turned sharp right and carried on roughly parallel to the original trail like the devil was breathing down his neck.
"This is madness! Charles! Where are you going?!" Carol Ann cried as the screeching monkey calls got ever closer. The terrain became uneven, so she had to look down at all times or else a root or an unsighted sink hole could trip her up and cause her to fall. At the same time, she wanted to be up to speed on what the monkeys, the king of the jungle and the cavemen playing the drums were doing, so she had plenty on her plate.
A thought suddenly struck her, and she forced herself to slow down though it ran against her every instinct. Panting hard, she looked everywhere but couldn't see hide nor hair of monkeys, beasts or cavemen.
The high humidity made it difficult to breathe, so she wheezed and gasped to extract the little oxygen the air would provide. Sweat was pouring off her in buckets, but she had lost the tiny, little handkerchief during the frantic escape - not that it would have done her any good. "Charles… Charles! Oh, why won't he ever listen to me… Spyros! We gotta stop running! Spyros!"
The Greek had noticed his companion was missing, and he came tearing back through the jungle to pick her up. "Mrs. Lawrence… we must hurry!" he said, grabbing hold of her arm.
Carol Ann resisted by yanking her arm back from his grip. "No, they want us to run! They're driving us ahead! Don't you understand? They're driving us toward something… maybe a trap of some kind. We're the prey!"
"But the aggressive animals…"
"It's the cavemen! I'll bet you a million dollars it's been the cavemen all along. I'm telling you, Spyros, we're being shepherded towards a trap or maybe another hunting party. They forced us off the safe trail… we're on their turf now, and if we don't stop to think and regroup, we're as good as dead!"
"Sweet mother of Zeus, you could be right." Spyros looked to the spot where they had last seen the Captain and the four Filipino sailors - the others were clean out of sight. The Greek whipped off his cap and rubbed his brow with frantic gestures. "But what should we do?"
"Do? We need to get back on the original trail and run like the wind for the beach!" Carol Ann cried, pointing back to the trail they had left behind when they had heard the beast roaring behind the cluster of palm trees. To support her theory, the jungle had returned to its regular sounds after they had stopped running, though the occasional animal call could still be heard.
Only a split second later, Charles let out a panicky scream from somewhere further into the jungle. Carol Ann and Spyros spun around and stared in the direction from which the shout had come, but they couldn't see anything.
"We need to help… oh God, I hope nothing's happened to Charles," Carol Ann said as she set off in a fast jog through the dense vegetation, regardless of the dangers that could lurk behind every tree.
---
When she and Spyros arrived at where the others had stopped, Charles was kneeling on the forest floor white as a sheet. His khaki safari suit was covered in twigs, leaves and clumps of dirt like he had been rolling in it. Sitting up, he brushed the various items off of him, but he hadn't yet regained the ability to speak.
"Darling… what happened?" Carol Ann said and knelt down next to her husband. He could only shake his head, so she looked to the four sailors for an explanation. They rattled off a lengthy string of words in their native tongue that she couldn't make heads or tails of, so she had to wait for Spyros to collect the information.
"Death trap," the Greek said laconically, pointing down on the ground.
Carol Ann drew a sharp breath when she followed his pointing finger. It had been perfectly camouflaged, but the ground dropped away from the regular level of the forest floor and into an eight-foot pit right in front of where she and her husband were kneeling. At the bottom of the pit, sixteen or so lethal, wooden spikes were sticking up from the ground in an angle that would skewer anything that would fall into the pit from that side. Each spike was coated in a sticky, dark-brown liquid that resembled syrup in its viscosity.
"Dear God… I was right. They were driving us toward it. They must be cannibals… or headhunters," she croaked and involuntarily moved away from the edge of the pit. She grabbed hold of the pale Charles and dragged him with her. "Spyros… we- we need to get back to the trail. Charles… please, Charles, snap out of it, man. What happened?" she continued as she helped brush twigs and leaves out of her husband's hair.
"I fell down…" he croaked in a strangled voice, "but Ramón and the others grabbed me… at the last… second… we need to get back to the beach!"
Carol Ann sighed as Charles snapped out of the stupor and returned to his old, commanding self. A moment later, he got up and picked the final clumps of dirt off his safari suit. "This way! Mr. Antonakis, make sure to thank Ramón when we get back to the Empress . He'll get an extra ten dollars in his wages this month as a one-time bonus."
"Yes, Captain Lawrence," Spyros said and updated the Filipino who assumed a look that said he felt he deserved just a bit more than that.
Carol Ann shook her head and followed her husband. "Charles, wait… what if there are more pits? We can't just set off aimlessly… the cavemen are far cleverer than we've given them credit for. They know what they're doing."
"And I don't? Of course I do. We turned left, then went straight ahead, then turned right to get to where we are now. The trail is over there," he said and gestured into the jungle. "Approximately," he continued when he realized that every section of the jungle was identical to the one right next to it.
The news they were lost again didn't sit well with Carol Ann who let out a long, frustrated groan. "And the cavemen? Do you honestly think they'll let us get away just because we've escape their first trap?"
"They've been quiet lately…"
"But they're still here! They're watching our every move. Mark my words," she said sharply.
Charles chuckled and grabbed hold of his wife's shoulders. "Temper, temper, little lady. Goodness me, Carol Ann… such an attitude doesn't become you."
Carol Ann nearly bit her tongue in half to keep quiet. The fire didn't leave her, but she chose to concede the point simply to cut down the time spent on the mysterious, frightening island. "The beach can't be far. As long as we head downhill, we should be safe."
"That's more like it, sweetheart," Charles said and leaned in to kiss his wife's forehead. He stopped at the last moment and grimaced at the sight of the filth, sweat and grime that stuck to Carol Ann's fair skin. Instead of kissing her, he gave her shoulders a little squeeze before they set off.
-*-*-*-
Carol Ann, Charles and the others raced headlong into the unknown. They went past colorful carnivorous plants that moved their heads to track them, past palm trees large and small, through dense shrubbery that tore at their clothes, and around an ant hill that was large enough for Carol Ann to disappear behind it.
By keeping the sun ahead of them throughout - and thus going west - they were able to leave the worst of the jungle behind and enter the flat part of the final stretch down to the sandy shore. For Carol Ann, the gray sand and the blue Pacific couldn't come soon enough. Her lungs were burning from the exertion and her calves had turned to lead from wearing the heavy, new hiking boots.
They had a mere one hundred fifty yards to go until they would reach the shore and the safety of their boats. Carol Ann could already see the yacht tender as a burgundy blob in a sea of tan-gray. Wheezing and gasping, she pulled herself together and set off on the final part of their perilous adventure.
A second later, she found herself in a free fall, headed for a nasty rendezvous with the ground. She didn't have time to cry out on her way down, but the hard landing that kicked up a storm of old leaves drove the air out of her with a whoosh and a drawn-out whimper. Dazed, confused and hurting from the rough treatment, she groaned out loud and tried to sit up at once, but the crash landing had knocked the wind clean out of her sails.
Spyros and the Filipinos came to her rescue at once, but her brain was too muddled to understand what she had to do in order to get on her feet, so she flopped about like a boneless rag doll.
Her right ankle was as painful as her upper body, but she couldn't understand why until she noticed a camouflaged tripwire suspended six inches off the ground. The thin rope ran between two palm trees and could only have been put there by a human being. Her ribs were aching like she had bent every last one of them, but she only let out a small cry when she noticed Charles being down on the ground next to her.
Her husband appeared to be in much the same condition as she, but at least there hadn't been any spikes coated in poison involved this time. Her sailor's cap and her sunglasses had been blown off by the impact, but while the cap was just at her fingertips, the pink spectacles had flown into the undergrowth and were gone.
The four Filipino sailors tended to Charles, but Spyros tried once again to pull the weak-kneed Carol Ann to her feet. "Mrs. Lawrence… are you all right? That was a nasty tumble… can you walk?"
"I don't… know… I can… hard- hardly… breathe," Carol Ann said, gasping with pain when she tried to take a deep breath. Her face was flushed and contorted into a twisted grimace, but a shadowy movement behind Spyros made her turn whiter than a sheet. Staring wide-eyed at an object just beyond the Greek's shoulder, she raised her arm to point. "Look!" she wheezed.
Everybody spun around and came face to face with what could only be described as a native of the island. Standing at five foot five at the most, the hunter - who appeared to be in his mid to late twenties - had muscles everywhere that rippled under his reddish-brown skin. He was naked down to his bare feet save for a black fur codpiece held up by a leather band around his waist that concealed his manhood. His muscular upper body and arms were decorated with intricate, swirling tattoos, and he wore red and black grease stripes on his cheeks and forehead. He was armed with a spear and a long, hollow reed.
His vibrant, dark-brown eyes underneath his long, black hair that had been pulled up into a bun revealed they weren't dealing with a halfwit caveman but a knowledgeable, experienced hunter or warrior. He had vaguely Asian or Polynesian features, especially around the eyes, the nose and the cheekbones, but it was clear he was his own man.
The hunter barked a few commands and gesticulated at the intruders, but no one could understand or even recognize his dialect. When it became clear he wasn't getting anywhere, he sent out a call that prompted half a dozen other hunters to join them at the trap.
Carol Ann held her breath and slid behind Charles for protection. She stared at the seven natives with wide, worried eyes. They were trapped with no way out, and although they were armed with rifles, she couldn't see either side winning if it came to a shooting battle.
The other hunters that fanned out next to the first one weren't as muscular as the one with the red and black stripes on his cheeks. The difference between them led Carol Ann to theorize the older, more muscular one could be a chief or at least someone high up the hierarchy.
A panic spread out between the four Filipino sailors, and they spoke to each other in their own language almost like they were debating what to do. The confusion became Charles' cue, and he grabbed a rifle out of Ramón's hands. "This has gone on long enough," he said and worked the bolt action. "You savages let us go now… and we won't kill you. Carol Ann… Mr. Antonakis, move back."
The aggressive move led to a murmur rippling through the natives. As the Captain raised his rifle, the hunters raised their hollow reeds.
Carol Ann let out a grunt and grabbed hold of her husband's safari suit. "Charles, don't be a fool… they don't understand what you're saying! Don't point the rifle at them!"
The lead native suddenly cocked his head and shot Carol Ann a puzzled stare like he hadn't been aware she was a woman until she spoke. A smile broke out on his lips as he uttered several, far friendlier words to the fair-skinned intruders. He finished off his little speech by pointing at Carol Ann, closing his fist and moving it back to his chest. Then he pointed at the men in the expedition and spread his hands out wide.
"What is that brown savage trying to tell us?" Charles growled, but Carol Ann knew.
Her heart skipped a beat as the awful potential of the situation revealed itself to her. Her chin began to quiver and her throat tied itself into a knot just thinking about it. "He wants to trade," she croaked and had to swallow hard. "Your freedom… in… in exchange for me."
"What?" Charles barked, staring down the native. "That'll be a cold day in hell! Now you listen good, you black ape, that's my wife you're talking about. I'd rather give you a bullet in the head than to see your savage paws on her. Do you understand me? Go on, give me an excuse to kill you!"
"Charles!" Carol Ann cried, "You're not helping!"
"Quiet, woman! I'm trying to save your life!"
"Charles-"
"Mr. Antonakis, keep my wife back and out of harms' way!"
Spyros gulped but tried to reach for Carol Ann's arms. An angry green glare made him back off at once.
The native chief had misunderstood Charles' angry tirade and waved one of his fellow hunters closer to him. They spoke a few words before the younger native stepped ahead and reached for Carol Ann's arm.
A second later, Charles pulled the rifle's trigger. The loudness of the shot made everyone jump, and the native staggered back with dark red blood pouring out of the horrible wound in his chest. Crying out in pain, he tried to cling onto another of the hunters, but his knees buckled and he fell to the ground.
"Oh God, no… you killed him… you killed him, Charles," Carol Ann cried, clutching her head at the horrendous sight.
The native chief stared at the dead hunter with equal measures of shock and hatred written all over his face. Spinning around, he roared out his anger at Charles and the others before he jumped forward with a look of murderous rage in his eyes.
Carol Ann screamed at the top of her lungs, but that was all she had time to do before the explorers and the hunters were engaged in a brutal, bloody melee.
*
*
CHAPTER 4
An impenetrable darkness had invaded Carol Ann's mind. The unnatural heaviness of her limbs was accompanied by a strange condition that turned all sounds into an indecipherable, atonal mess.
Gentle swaying stirred her from a dreamless sleep. In her drowsy state, she reckoned she was back in the king-sized bed on the Empress of the Pacific . She had lost all sense of time, but it had to be during the night since no light could penetrate the odd darkness. The gentle rolling of the luxury yacht continued and did it best to put her back to sleep, but there was something strange about the sheet she was lying on. For some reason, it was far coarser than her usual silk bed linen.
Wood that creaked and groaned right next to her ear didn't sound like the hull of the Empress . She tried to turn her head to hear better, but a sharp, stinging pain from her neck made her cry out and clap her hand against it. She could feel a small welt from a wound she couldn't remember receiving.
Odd jingling reached her ears, and she imagined it was the brass bell placed on the outside of the pilot house. When she wanted to see for herself to make sure, she discovered her eyelids were so heavy they might as well have been glued shut. Through a superhuman effort, she cracked open the right one to take in her surroundings. A moment later, she wished she hadn't.
The gentle swaying wasn't produced by the Empress of the Pacific at all but by the two reddish-brown natives who carried her between them in a coarse, wide-meshed net. The sounds of creaking wood turned out to be the thick branch holding the net on the two men's shoulders, and the jingling came when their weapons touched as they walked.
Raving like a teetotaler on the first bender of her life, she tried to grab hold of the net to cry for help, but all she succeeded in doing was to make the wound on her neck sting even worse. When she opened her mouth to scream out her fears, all she could produce were inarticulate bleating and nonsensical babble. She couldn't speak, she couldn't control her limbs and she could hardly think.
Everything was a Technicolor blur to her, but the recent past slowly returned to her mind's eye though she couldn't tell the truth from the fever-induced nightmares. She saw the chief hunter fight Charles and the sailors; she saw Spyros Antonakis go down after being hit by a dart from one of the hollow reeds; she saw blood squirting out of someone after another rifle shot had echoed through the small clearing they had been in; and finally, she felt a stinging pain on the side of her neck. That was the last impression of the fight that her mind had recorded before it blanked out.
Instinctively, she reached up to feel the angry welt. The hollow reeds were blowguns and she had been hit by a dart fired from one of them - that was the only explanation for her grotesque state. Like a rag doll, her head lolled over to lean against the net on the other side as the two natives carrying her stepped over a fallen palm tree. She could hardly blink, but at least she was still alive.
---
She didn't know if the natives had carried her for ten minutes or ten years. The perpetual swaying had left her dizzy, then nauseous, then dead-tired. She hadn't been able to resist her eyelids slipping shut, but when she woke up again, the section of the jungle they were passing through didn't seem any different.
A growing worry about the fates of her husband and the other members of the team began to roll through her. While it was possible they were also being carried in nets, she couldn't see past the wide bodies of the natives so she could find out. An attempt at calling Charles' name resulted in a big, fat nothing: her vocal cords simply wouldn't work beyond grunting.
---
Confusion and worry gave way to frustration and a simmering anger. She had tried to listen for signs of life from her husband, Spyros and the others, but the only sounds she could hear beyond the creaking wood - and the lone bongo drummer somewhere in the line who seemed to provide the tempo for the others - were calls from animals; the monkeys had returned, as had the beast she knew as the king of the jungle. Its wild roars didn't seem to worry the natives, so she had an inkling its bark was worse than its bite.
When she grew tired of looking at the wiggling rear cheeks of the half-naked native in front of her, she tried to look up to get a better view of the hunter who walked behind her.
He was younger than the native with the greasepaint stripes on his face, and he seemed less muscular. He had a bruise across his gut that could have come from the butt of a rifle, and the right side of his face was swollen and discolored like he had been on the receiving end of a mean left hook.
When the native noticed he was being watched by their prisoner, he uttered a few words to someone further up the line. Moments later, the chief hunter came down and walked next to the net.
Carol Ann looked at him with eyes and pupils that still didn't want to cooperate fully. The chief exchanged a few words with the native who was closest to her, but she couldn't understand a single syllable.
Apart from a few scrapes and bruises on his hands and muscular upper body, the chief hunter looked unscathed. The pure hatred painted across his face was a different story altogether. It was clear Charles' killing of one of the hunters had set the whole thing in motion, but how far the chief was prepared to take it out on Carol Ann was difficult to predict.
At one point, he put his face right next to the net and barked several words that dripped with venom. When he raised his blowgun, Carol Ann tried to cry out and protect her face with her hands, but she was still too affected by the first dart to have any control over her body. All she managed to do was to utter an incoherent groan and slap herself over the cheek.
Taking pity on his defeated opponent, the chief lowered his weapon and moved back to the head of the hunting party.
Carol Ann breathed a sigh of relief and tried to shuffle around inside the net so she had a better view of where they were going. The movement sent an unfortunate though familiar smell into her nostrils, and when she reached down to touch her full-legged sailor's pants, she realized the poisoned blow dart had made her lose control over her bladder as well. Embarrassed, she groaned out loud and wiped her fingers on a dry part of her pants.
To take her mind off her little accident, she focused on the jungle they went past. Another type of tree was mixed in with the palms indicating they had moved into a different part of the jungle, or perhaps of the island itself.
The trunks of the new trees were thicker and of a darker tone than the pale palms, and they seemed older. Plants with large and heavy dark-green leaves stood in clusters around the base and roots of the new trees. White, orchid-like flowers with bright red catkins stood on tall stalks among the green leaves to create a splash of bright colors in the middle of the sea of green and brown.
The red and orange carnivorous plants that had been so wide-spread in other sections of the jungle were few and far between, and almost as a result, there seemed to be a larger amount of flying insects buzzing around in the air.
A shiver ran down Carol Ann's spine when she happened to glance at another of the giant cobwebs that were suspended between several tree trunks. More than half a dozen black-and-yellow spiders of varying size - but none of them small - zipped around the web to repair a hole that had been torn in the intricate fabric.
Spiders weren't among Carol Ann's favorite things, so she slammed her eyes shut and hoped the natives carrying her would move past the cobweb in a hurry.
---
Time continued to go by in a blur for Carol Ann. At least she had begun to regain control over her extremities, but it didn't help that her legs were asleep from being curled up into an involuntary fetal position inside the net. Now, she could move her hands without bashing herself over the head, and she could even get her throat to form simple words.
"What… venom… did… they… shoot… me… with…?" she croaked as the swaying motion grew stronger when the natives had to climb over several large boulders to move ahead. "Ch… Char… Cha… Charles… are… you… there? Answer… me… Spyros?"
No replies at all came back to her, so she let out a frustrated grunt and dropped her head back against the netting. "Where… are… you… taking… me?" she said strongly to the native closest to her. "Oh… you… bloody… savages…"
The news that their prisoner had regained the ability to speak spread between the natives, and it didn't take long for the chief hunter to return to Carol Ann's side. He hadn't lost any of the anger and hatred that contorted his face each time he looked at her, though when he leaned down, he spoke to her in a tone that was calmer than his expression had hinted at.
"I… don't… understand… you… dammit!" Carol Ann croaked.
The lack of understanding went both ways as the chief scrunched up his face at the odd words coming out of the mouth of the strange, fair-haired woman. His last-ditch attempt was sign language, so he held his hands like someone carrying a stick or a rifle. Then he slapped his palms together to represent the sound of the shots that had been fired. Making a fist, he thumped his chest to show that a hunter had been killed. To finish off, he pointed at his fellow hunters before the index finger became an accusing one that pointed straight at Carol Ann's face.
The motion made a cold shower flush down Carol Ann's spine. It was clear by the chief's message they held her responsible for the killing of the native. They could easily have finished her off at the site of the battle, but they hadn't, so it was possible they had a special kind of punishment planned for her. Her chin began to quiver, but she refused to cry in front of the aggressive strangers. "I know…" she croaked, rubbing her mouth to make the quivering go away, "we sh- shouldn't ha- have shot that- that man, but…"
A bark that didn't need translation burst out of the chief's mouth. With an angry sneer, he stomped away from her to get back up front.
---
Not long after, babbling water indicated they were getting close to a stream of some kind. The further they went through a small clearing, the louder the babbling became until the body of water entered Carol Ann's limited field of vision.
It wasn't quite a river, but a width of eight feet or so made it too wide to be called a stream or a creek. The trees near it all leaned down towards the water, and their gnarly roots were exposed all along the banks of the small river that cut through the forest floor in a disorderly, snaking fashion.
Looking to her left, Carol Ann could just make out the mountainous cone they had seen the entire day. It was at a different angle compared to when she and the others had been on the natural slab of rock before all the bad things started - she surmised it meant the natives had carried her across more than a third of the island.
The chief hunter barked a string of commands up front, and the column set off crossing the small river. The two natives carrying Carol Ann awaited their turn in good order. Before they could get going, the chief came splashing back across the river and crouched down at the net. He shot his prisoner a dark look as he exchanged a few calm words with the lead of the two natives.
Carol Ann didn't like the look, nor the laid back way the message was delivered. Shouting she could deal with, but there was something creepy about the chief's eyes when he spoke to the other natives. A wave of worry rolled over her as her carriers set off into the river.
Halfway across, her fears came true when the natives dunked the net into the water with nary a warning. She barely had time to take a deep breath before the cold water rushed over her going at a far greater speed than she had expected. Stuck fast with no means to escape, all she could do was cling onto the net with both hands though she was thrown about by the buffeting. The torture continued for so long that she was on the brink of running out of air. Her lungs caught fire and it became a Herculean task to fight the instinctual urge to draw a breath.
Just when her will to fight the urge crumbled, the chief hunter nodded at his men who lifted the net out of the river.
Hacking, croaking, coughing and spluttering, Carol Ann gulped down all the air she could get as soon as she left the water behind. Red and black spots danced about in her vision, her ears were ringing, and her heart thumped irregularly for the first several seconds until it settled into a frantic cadence.
Soaked to the core, she hacked and spluttered a little while longer before she wiped the wet hair out of her eyes with hands that shook so much they were of little use. All around her, water cascaded off the net and her clothes and created a large puddle on the jungle floor that the natives behind her had to sidestep to avoid.
"Why?" she croaked, staring with red eyes at the chief hunter who hadn't left her side. "Why? I d- didn't shoot that man… why?!"
The chief snorted and moved back to the head of the party.
---
The group of hunters turned north and followed the shore of the snaking body of water for a short while. As it turned out, the crossing of the river marked the beginning of the end of the trek through the jungle. Not long after the terrifying experience at the river, a penetrating smell of wood smoke filled Carol Ann's nostrils. The drums of doom were quick to follow, almost like someone had spotted the column and had decided to stage a homecoming celebration.
Though the reddish-brown body of the native in front of Carol Ann blocked her view, she could see that she was being carried towards a camp of some kind. A tall, wide clay wall in nearly the same reddish hue as the natives stretched out for hundreds of yards on either side of a sturdy, wooden gate. Two sentries armed with spears and blowguns were guarding the gate from atop the wall, and other half-naked natives - all boys and young men - were loitering about in front of the wooden gate like they had been waiting for the hunting party to return.
The odd, unique prisoner soon attracted plenty of attention from the crowd. Carol Ann felt like a calf at a cattle auction when she was poked and prodded by the natives who all had to stick their faces up close to the net to see what kind of weird, alien creature the hunters had found.
A string of angry commands from the chief hunter made them step back, and a few of the excited faces turned dark and bashful. The large, wooden gate opened with an agonizing creak. Beyond the gate, the camp was even larger than it had appeared.
Carol Ann grabbed hold of the net with both hands as she was brought across the threshold and into a central square followed by the group of loud boys and even louder young men. All around her, reddish-brown natives of all ages appeared from clay huts to see what the hubbub was about.
Baring her teeth in a worried grimace, she tried to gulp down the sour surge that rose in her gullet - it wasn't easy since her mouth had become bone dry all of a sudden. The wood smoke from a large bonfire just off to the side of the square tore at her nostrils, and she could feel a tickling sneeze coming on.
When the natives carrying her came to a stop in the middle of the square, she expected the vindictive chief hunter to give her another bad ride, and she was right. He ordered his men to simply drop the contents of the net onto the ground instead of releasing her with care.
The hard landing directly onto her lower back and rear end knocked the wind out of her, and she could only let out a pained whimper as she fell over onto her side on the square's hard, dusty surface. She stretched out her legs for the first time since being captured, and her knees objected loudly to the harsh treatment.
The gate creaking shut behind her spelled out what she already knew - she was in serious trouble.
-*-*-*-
The camp had been laid out in a confusing, irregular pattern. It seemed the round clay huts had been strewn about at random because there was no visual logic or even planning to the layout. Almost militaristic in their lack of individuality, the huts had no windows or even doors, merely oblong gaps in the walls, and their roofs were uniformly thatched using palm tree leaves woven together with what appeared to be brown rope.
A well operated by a wooden winch had been dug into the square's hard surface roughly near the center, and a native was busy pulling up water in a bucket. While he was working, he craned his neck so hard to look at the fair-skinned stranger that he dropped more water than he collected. It wasn't until his feet got soaked by a big splash that he turned his attention back to the task at hand.
Two larger huts had been built close to the well. Unlike the smaller hovels around them, they had boards or shutters that could be pulled over the gaps in the walls to create privacy or shade. A hut with a far lower roof and what appeared to be grating covering the single window hole had been placed by itself on the far side of the square.
Carol Ann had time to look at all that because the natives around her had decided to take a few steps back in case the strange, blonde being was a carrier of diseases. Sighing, she took full advantage of the rare moment of peace to massage her muscles, knees and ankles. Her right ankle was still sore after slamming into the tripwire, and it had an angry red stripe across it just above the edge of her boot.
Worse still, she was alone. She had hoped Charles, Spyros and the Filipino sailors had been brought along by the small column of hunters, but they hadn't been. She had apparently been the only prisoner taken from the battle near the beach. Whether that meant her husband and the others were alive, injured or dead was impossible to say.
Her chin began to quiver at the gloomy prospects of her immediate future, but she rubbed it angrily to make it go away. Looking around at the natives who were speaking amongst themselves in excited tones while they waited, she had a hard time gauging what they were going to do to her.
The all-too brief moment of serenity was broken when the chief hunter stepped out of one of the two larger huts and barked a string of commands. At once, several natives broke ranks and ran into the center of the square to grab hold of Carol Ann's arms.
Crying out, she tried to resist, but the men were too strong and yanked her to her feet in a hurry with no regard to her well-being. The two half-naked natives holding her uttered a few growled words and began to shove her back and forth between them.
The manhandling ended when the chief hunter came up to stand in front of the small group. With him, he had an elderly man who had an air of importance about him.
Shorter than the others at five foot three, the elderly, gray-haired man wore a toga-like cape that hid most of his old, wrinkled body. He carried a bag made of black fur over his left shoulder, and he reached into it to find various wooden instruments, a piece of cloth and a small vial.
"No!" Carol Ann cried when she saw the items. She tried to jerk back, but it only made the two natives holding her squeeze her arms harder and force her into submission. "Please don't torture me! I didn't have anything to do with the killing of your brave! The chief there can tell you! I wasn't armed and I didn't pull the trigger!"
Hearing the strange, foreign language, the elderly man looked at the chief with a puzzled expression on his face. When he looked back at Carol Ann, it was almost like he understood a word here and there, but not the overall meaning.
"Oh God… do you understand me? English… do you speak English?" Carol Ann cried, trying hard to pronounce every word as clearly as she could. "I am Carol Ann Lawrence… tell the others I had nothing to do with killing your man!"
The elderly native licked his colorless lips a couple of times like he was searching for words. Shrugging, he gave up and moved closer to the prisoner with the vial and the piece of cloth.
Carol Ann let out an unbridled scream, but the natives held her so tight she couldn't move an inch. Her eyes nearly popped out in sheer terror when the chief hunter forced her head to the side which exposed the red welt caused by the blow dart. Her breathing was reduced to a series of pained gasps as the elderly man soaked the cloth with a substance from the vial and moved it closer to her neck.
"No… no," she moaned upon feeling the cloth on her neck, but much to her surprise, the substance was cool and numbing to the touch. A delightful aroma of flowers and herbal extracts rose from the cloth that the elderly man rubbed carefully against the welt.
When he moved away, he smiled at her while he stowed the vial back in the fur bag. He looked down her strange outfit and found a pants pocket in which he shoved the laced cloth so she had it for later.
"Oh, thank God… a medicine man," Carol Ann croaked as the remedy numbed the skin around the welt and removed the stinging pain she had felt ever since her capture. With a breath that came in gasps and a heart that pounded mercilessly in her chest, she tried to return the smile but it never got far beyond a faint creasing of her lips.
The medicine man nodded and once again reached into his fur bag. After rummaging around, he found a couple of green leaves that he offered Carol Ann. When her furrowed brow proved she didn't know what it was, he took one of the leaves, put it into his mouth and began to chew on it - then he held up the other one.
"Oh…" Carol Ann said, remembering something she had read in Reader's Digest about certain tribes in the South Pacific chewing on intoxicant leaves to get a buzz. "No, thank you. I don't even smoke cigarettes. No," she said and shook her head.
The elderly man grinned and stuffed the other leaf into his mouth as well.
An excited murmur rippling through the crowd of natives made Carol Ann crane her neck to try to look behind her. Her movements were restricted by the hunters holding her until the chief uttered a command that made them turn around.
Even the medicine man bowed when an important-looking native stepped out of one of the larger huts near the well. Escorted by four warriors, the man strolled towards their prisoner with unhurried steps like he had all the time in the world. He was of average height but carried a much heavier bulk compared to the slim, agile natives.
"That must be their king… or chieftain…" Carol Ann whispered, looking at the necklace of white bones the important man wore around his neck on top of a bandolier of black fur that ran from his right shoulder and down to his left hip.
Large, hollow ear rings dangled below his lobes, and his shoulders and chest seemed to be painted with a powdery, chalk-like substance unlike the tattoos worn by the hunters. Instead of the ubiquitous fur codpiece, the overweight chieftain wore a full-sized loincloth that was held up by a braided leather belt around his bulky waist.
When he got close, Carol Ann could see he was in his mid to late forties. She felt it most prudent to show her respect to the ruler of the natives, so she yanked herself free of her captors and knelt on the hard square.
The chieftain nodded and spoke a few rumbling words before he gestured at the chief hunter who promptly grabbed Carol Ann's arm and pulled her back on her feet.
"I'm… I'm Carol Ann Lawrence… do you speak English?" Carol Ann said, but the puzzled look on the chieftain's face proved without a doubt that he didn't. Letting out a long sigh that betrayed the resignation she felt, she looked down at the ground in defeat. "Of course you don't. I'm all alone in a Godforsaken world filled with hostile natives I can't communicate with… just wonderful."
The chieftain scratched his thinning hair and looked to the chief hunter for an explanation for the female's odd language, but the younger man had no answer beyond a shrug. Mirroring the shrug, the chieftain moved in and took hold of his prisoner's arm.
Carol Ann let out a startled cry and tried to yank her arm free, but the two hands holding onto it were stronger. When the chieftain pulled her shirtsleeve back to reveal her bare arm, she clenched her jaw and let out a fierce growl. "Oh no, you don't! Don't think for a second I'll let you swines violate me without a fight …" she cried, trying to break free of the grip.
Once again the chieftain shot the hunter a puzzled look. Since the younger man's face was for once set in stone and didn't betray any of his emotions, Carol Ann's comments went unanswered. Instead, the chieftain held his own bare arm next to his prisoner's to show the marked difference in the color of their skin. Grinning, he let Carol Ann's arm go and gestured to the chief hunter to do the same.
"Oh… oh, thank God," Carol Ann croaked, rolling down her sleeve in a hurry the second she had her hands free. She offered the chieftain a worried smile that he replied to with a genuine one.
The mature, bulky man strolled around her and took her long, blond - and extraordinary filthy - hair between his fingers. He said a few words to his natives who duly laughed.
Carol Ann had stiffened at the older man's touch, but she relaxed and let out a sigh when he was only interested in fondling her hair. "They must think I'm some kind of freak… fair-skinned and blonde…" she mumbled to herself. Glancing around, she noted that everyone at the camp shared the coloring of the tribes indigenous to the South Pacific by having reddish-brown skin and shiny, near-black hair. "But am I really the first white woman they've seen? That can't be right… although… although, come to think of it, there aren't any women anywhere… maybe they're cannibals who only eat women…?"
The chieftain and the senior hunter looked at each other and performed identical grimaces at their prisoner's apparent mental illness - after all, she was holding a lengthy conversation with herself.
The crowd around the trio grew restless, and someone shouted a comment that sounded resentful toward Carol Ann. Nodding, the chieftain turned around and spoke to the chief hunter in a more intense and serious voice.
Carol Ann kept a close eye on the two men as they spoke. She had no way of knowing the topic of the conversation, but since the senior figure's voice had changed, she surmised it revolved around the native who had been shot dead.
The younger man seemed to confirm her theory by nodding and pointing at his own chest in the exact spot where the native had been shot. He slapped his hands together to simulate the sound of the rifle shot before he pointed his thumb at Carol Ann.
Grunting, the chieftain fell quiet and began to fiddle with the bone necklace like he was seeking answers and hoping his gods would provide them. After a brief while where he had studied Carol Ann closely from top to toe, he cocked his head and asked the chief hunter a question that made the younger man grind his teeth and look surly.
Carol Ann looked from one man to the other. It was clear to her that a battle of authority was taking place. She had witnessed Charles use the same tactics with his employees when something had gone wrong at the Empress of the Pacific or back home at the company - however, it only worked when there was a strong class difference between the parties involved. If both men were equally headstrong, sparks could fly. If they did, she would find herself in the firing line.
An angry stream of words suddenly burst out of the hunter as he once more relayed the story of the battle from his perspective, ending with the killing of one of the men that he'd had under his command. Several times, he pointed an accusing index finger at Carol Ann, or shot her dark, hateful glares.
The chieftain clammed up again and looked at Carol Ann. Without taking his eyes off her, he asked the hunter a single, and possibly simple, question.
Several seconds went by before the chief hunter replied with a single-syllable answer that came out in such a growl that Carol Ann was hard-pressed to even recognize it as a word in any language.
Tension suddenly blossomed between the two senior figures, but it was defused when the chief hunter spun around on his heel and stomped away, pushing aside the crowd of onlookers who had gathered in a loose circle around the chieftain and the prisoner.
Carol Ann kept a firm eye on him in case he came back to threaten her with one of the blowguns or a spear, but when he stomped into one of the clay huts and lowered a curtain in front of the door gap, she let out a long sigh of relief.
Turning back to the chieftain, she tried to gauge his intentions, but the mature man's face was hard to decipher. "So…" she tried, "what will happen to me now? Will you let me go? Please… please let me go. I promise I'll leave your island… your kingdom… as soon as I find the beach. I'll swim out to the boat if I have to!"
It was clear the chieftain didn't understand a word, so she pointed at herself, then at the exit down by the wooden gate. While she did so, she moved her feet like she was walking.
The chieftain chuckled over her little show but ended up shaking his head. Instead of releasing her, he waved two natives over and issued a few commands to them. Even before Carol Ann could protest, they grabbed her arms and forced her towards the small, low hut beyond the center of the square.
"N- no! Where are you taking me?! No!" she cried in a voice that turned panicky, but all the chieftain did was to disperse the crowd to get everyone back to work.
---
The two men dumped her onto the hard surface in front of the low hut before they thumped on the wooden board protecting the door. The reddish-brown face of a native became visible through the grating covering the window next to the door, but it only took a few seconds for the apron-clad person to remove the wooden board and let his fellow tribesmates inside with their strange prisoner.
Carol Ann was thrown onto the floor with a hard shove. The landing kicked up a storm of dust, old cobwebs and even older fragments of palm leaves that were used as a carpet. "Oh, you wretched savages… throwing me in jail when I'm the bloody victim here! You primitive sons of bitches," she growled as she turned around and dusted off her hands that had become dirty from the filthy floor.
She looked around the small hut and got the creeps at once. Not only did the jail cell carry an unfortunate smell of urine and worse, much of the inside of the roof was covered in cobwebs. Not all had spiders at the center, but enough did to give her the creepy-crawlies at once. She crinkled her nose at the stench of human waste, but it was unavoidable since the bathroom facility was an open clay pot in the corner.
Moving her legs up, she shuffled into a sitting fetal position and rested her weary head on her knees. A shiver ran down her spine at the thought of how long they might keep her in there. "If I refuse to take on food and water, I'll die within a week in this heat… but they'll probably force-feed me. Oh, God, if only I had told Charles that I had a headache today…"
The three natives shrugged at the strange language spoken by the equally strange prisoner. The two men who had carried Carol Ann there grunted a few words to the jailer before they left the hut. The remaining native sat down on a footstool just inside the door and kept a vigilant eye on the blonde being in his jail.
Carol Ann let out a long sigh that turned into a quiet sob. Taken aback by her unexpected reaction, she cleared her throat at once and rubbed her face like she tried to remove all the filth and grime. "No, I won't cry… I won't cry in front of these… these… savages. Charles was right all along… they really are-"
A grunt right above her made her look up in a hurry. The apron-clad jailer held up a jar filled with a liquid of some kind. The semi-darkness in the hut meant she couldn't tell what it was, but at least it didn't smell disgusting, but sweet.
She reached out for the jar with a trembling hand, expecting the jailer to be as mean as the chief hunter and snatch it away from her at the last moment. He didn't, and she took it. Sniffing the contents, she came to the conclusion that it was a mix of juices of exotic fruits; she recognized pineapple and mango, and there was something else as well that she knew but couldn't remember the name of.
It was worth a sip, so she took a small one just to please her jailer. When the fresh, fruity taste exploded in her mouth, she let out a groan of delight and chugged down the whole thing.
The jailer stared at the empty jar when she gave it back to him, but he shrugged and moved back to the footstool.
The brief high had done Carol Ann good, but the dark, gloomy reality soon caught up with her. She lowered her head onto her knees and let out a long sigh. There was nothing she could do, so she closed her eyes and tried to get some rest. Night had to be falling soon, and what would happen to her then would be anyone's guess.
*
*
CHAPTER 5
As late afternoon became early evening, life went back to normal for the natives living inside the camp's high walls. The initial excitement of seeing such a strange, fair-skinned creature had died down and the natives had returned to their regular tasks like hunting, harvesting palm leaves to use as new thatch, and making clay to repair the walls of a hut that had been damaged in the bad storm.
Now and then, young natives came up to the jail hut and tried to peek in through the grated window. The jailer chased them away with a few strong words, but the bravest souls always came back to make faces at Carol Ann, or to shout various slurs at her that - judging by the sniggers that came out of the less-brave who stayed well back - were lewd.
Since the first hunting party had come back empty-handed save for their female prisoner, a second party had been sent out later in the afternoon. A large cheer spread through the camp when the main gates opened to reveal they'd had more success.
The young men mugging at the grated window all hurried away to be part of the celebration, so Carol Ann shuffled over to the hole in the wall to see what was going on.
The second party had brought back a large, bear-like creature covered in black fur and with curved tusks around its muzzle. The dead beast was hanging underneath a branch just like Carol Ann had been, and she shivered when she watched it being dumped on the ground next to a couple of firepits at the far side of the square.
A group of natives wearing aprons set to work skinning the creature. Once the black fur had been removed and taken away by others who would use it for clothing, the carcass was hung up on wooden spikes to drain it of its blood. Soon, another group of natives who wielded sharp knives and axes made of flint began to carve chunks and slices out of it that were put into large, clay cooking pots that had been set up over the firepits. Once a pot had enough meat in it, natives carrying buckets added fresh, cool water from the well.
Carol Ann had been watching the events unfold through the grated window, but she shied back in a hurry as the proceedings turned bloody and horrific. Though the natives hadn't yet revealed themselves to be cannibals, she couldn't help but think that it could be her carcass being drained of its blood on those spikes.
She broke out in a shiver as she sat down on the floor. Though it was hard to believe since the day had been so boiling hot and humid, a chill spread up from the clay underneath her that went straight into her bones.
The apron-clad jailer rose from his chair and asked her a question that she didn't understand. Another shiver came over her, and she curled herself up into a sitting fetal position to try to contain her body heat for as long as possible.
Grunting, the jailer turned around and left the hut. Carol Ann barely had time to wonder where he went before he returned with a black fur blanket that clearly came from a beast similar to the one that had just been brought in. He swept it over his shoulders and pointed at it and then at Carol Ann several times.
"Oh… oh, thank you so much," Carol Ann said and reached out to show that she understood. When she received the black fur that was large enough for her to sit on and still wrap around her shoulders, she made herself comfortable and snuggled down into the warm blanket.
-*-*-*-
Outside the jail hut, a native smacked two fire stones together to create sparks that would ignite a piece of cloth. Once it was burning, he walked around the camp and lit a long line of torches.
Carol Ann had noticed and moved up to the window with the bamboo-like grating. Wrapping the fur blanket around her, she noted that night had fallen since the last time she had looked. Calls from a new set of nocturnal animals joined the sounds in the camp now that the sky was dark. She couldn't hear the characteristic monkey calls any longer; in their place, the shrill squawking of a bird of some kind echoed among the trees on the far side of the outer wall. Now and then, merry chirping could be heard. Had it been back home, she would have said it was a chipmunk making those noises, but she had no idea what kind of animal could produce such a sound on the mysterious, alien island.
As the native continued to walk around the square igniting torches, a few young men were involved in a game that looked like a cross between European football and wrestling. Carol Ann furrowed her brow as she tried to follow the odd game that didn't seem to have any rules. They were using a bundle of scrap fur and other cloth that had been tied together, and sometimes, one of the players would kick it around the field. Later, another player would pick it up and then they would wrestle each other to steal it.
"Weird," she mumbled and moved back to the center of the hut. The stench from the open toilet pot hadn't become less after night had fallen. After chugging down all that fruit juice, she had needed to go, and since the squat-pot was the only option to relieve herself, she had used it - she had even persuaded the jailer to leave for a minute or so while she conducted her business. "God, my mother-in-law would have dropped dead if she saw that," she continued in a mumble.
Thinking about her new American family made her come to a halt and close her eyes. She wanted to push all that aside since there was nothing she could do about it in her present situation, but it was difficult not to see the faces and hear the voices of the people back home at the mansion in California, or even those she had come to know and care for on the Empress of the Pacific . Not to mention her husband whose fate was still unknown.
She sighed and resumed walking around in a lazy figure-of-eight to keep fit and to take her mind off all those things she may never get to see again.
---
Later, someone knocked on the wooden board protecting the door to the jail hut. A native voice spoke a few sentences that made the jailer rise from his footstool and open the door.
Carol Ann was sitting cross-legged on the floor resting her weary eyes, but she snapped to full alertness at the prospect of visitors.
A beefy native came inside carrying a steaming pot of food and two wooden eating bowls. One of the bowls was thrown at Carol Ann's feet, but it hit her knee instead and made her cry out. The man laughed and reached into the steaming pot to take a wooden spoon. After filling the jailer's bowl with a spoonful of an unidentifiable soup-like substance, he looked at Carol Ann who was holding up her own bowl.
The man dug into the pot once more and scooped up a spoonful, but it was clear by the mean look in his eyes that he was going to throw it in Carol Ann's face instead of in her bowl.
A barked command from the jailer made the native drop the spoon back down into the pot and shoot the apron-clad man a nasty look. He said a few words in return before he spun around and left without giving Carol Ann any food.
"No! Give me something to eat! Oh, that mean son of a bitch… what a rotten piece of-!" Carol Ann cried and thumped her fist into the clay floor.
The jailer sighed and took pity on his prisoner by grabbing her bowl and pouring half of his own soup into it. Grunting, he thrust it into her hands.
"Oh, God… thank you. You've helped me so much," Carol Ann said, watching the jailer sit down and slurp from the bowl. Drawing her lips back in a worried grimace, she sniffed the soup-like contents to at least try to identify the contents. All she could tell was that it had a few exotic vegetables and some kind of meat. "It's probably from the black, furry beast… oh… but I'm hungry," she said and began to slurp down the chunky soup.
-*-*-*-
When the night was at its darkest, Carol Ann's exhausted mind finally gave up the unequal struggle with the forces of Nod, and she fell into a sleep that saw her revisit all the things that had happened to her over the course of the day mixed with all sorts of events from her past. She spoke to Charles about the importance of always wearing pink or turquoise gloves and a starched skirt when one went to a Jo Stafford or Dinah Shore lounge show in the luxury hotel he had planned to build in the jungle; she spoke to the friendly hostess from Hawaii, Elissa Helani, who served her a platter of bacon, scrambled eggs and breaded fried potatoes while they were enjoying the view from the slab of rock high up on the island; she spoke to Spyros Antonakis who shared a green leaf with her while they watched a group of half-naked natives put on an exotic dancing exhibition on the foredeck of the Empress of the Pacific .
The scene changed and she watched her husband kill the native with his rifle. The darts from the blowguns started zinging through the air; men screamed and fell over. Punches were thrown and flint spearheads glinted in the torchlight. A native was lying on the floor of the jungle with his lifeblood seeping out of his wounded chest. Others shouted unintelligible words that had no meaning. A fair, female voice screamed in terror but was silenced. Further darts zinged through the air; other men screamed and someone seemed to bang on an alarm bell of some kind.
Carol Ann awoke with a start when someone grabbed her shoulder. Staring into the darkness, she could see the apron-clad jailer had crouched down next to her holding a short spear in his hand. Fearing he was going to force himself on her, she cried out and moved away from the man, but he grabbed her shoulder again and let out a sound that didn't need translation no matter which language it was spoken in: "Shhh!"
Sitting up and rubbing her weary eyes, Carol Ann realized the sounds of violent fighting and the alarm bell being banged on were real and not just a figment of her dreams - the camp was really under attack from an unseen aggressor. "Charles?" she said, shoving the jailer's hand off her shoulder.
Though the native tried to hold her away from the window, she yanked herself free and jumped to her feet. She was at the grating covering the window in an instant and grabbed hold of it with both hands. Outside, it looked like a battlefield with several bodies lying motionless on the ground. Shouts were heard from everywhere around the jail hut, and darts and spears were blown or flung towards living targets. Drifting from the right came clouds of white smoke that billowed up from one of the firepits that had been knocked over. Flames from the destroyed firepit were crawling towards the next clay hut and soon spread over a large area. "Charles? Charles?! Charles?! I'm in here! In the low hut! Charles!"
The jailer let out a roar and threw his hands in the air. He grabbed his prisoner around the waist and tried to pull her away from the window, but she won the first battle of their little tug of war by clinging onto the bamboo-like grating with both hands.
"Charles!" Carol Ann cried, resisting for all she was worth. Though she tried to hang on, the superior strength of the jailer finally won out and he dragged her back from the window and onto the floor. She thumped her fist into the filth and tried to get up at once. "You've helped me so much already! Help me escape! What's it to you, anyway? You could just open the door and let me walk out of here… I promise I'll tell my husband that you helped me… please!"
Instead of allowing Carol Ann to leave, it appeared the jailer was on the brink of tearing his hair out. His lips were drawn back in an ugly grimace that proved how frustrated he was. To draw a fat line under it, he covered his mouth with his hands and let out another muffled "Shhhhh!" that only made Carol Ann shake her head at him.
An odd series of thwacks and thwunks impacted against the hut's outside wall and roof. It didn't sound like any rain Carol Ann had ever heard, and it soon became painfully clear that it wasn't. Moments later, the palm leaves making up the roof began to glow yellow, then orange.
"What in the world…?" Carol Ann said and jumped to her feet. She could hardly believe her eyes as burning fragments of leaves fluttered to the ground inside the jail hut. Soon, smoke billowed out from under the thatch that had been set alight by what appeared to be fire arrows. The woodwork in the ceiling began to crackle, creak and groan almost at once. "Charles, what- what are you doing? I'm in here! Charles, don't shoot at the hut!"
A long sentence of angry words directed at Carol Ann exploded from the jailer's mouth. The strange, blonde being still didn't understand him, so he let out a frustrated roar at her and began to move aside the wooden board protecting the door so they could escape.
Carol Ann caught on at once and helped her jailer pull the board aside. When the door gap was clear, she jumped toward it with the intent of running away. At the last moment, the native grabbed hold of her navy-striped blouse and yanked her back inside. "Keep your filthy paws to yourself, you savage!" she cried at him, slapping at his hand to get it to release her. "You open the door but expect me to stay inside a burning jail? Make up your bloody mind!"
A jagged shadow raced across the flickering, orange light from the roof fire. A weapon of sorts glinted in the flames, and at the last moment, the jailer grabbed hold of Carol Ann and threw her onto the floor.
Carol Ann opened her mouth to give the native an uncensored piece of her mind, but her throat tied itself into a knot when a foot-long flint knife or machete tore through the air and buried itself hilt-deep into the friendly jailer's gut, carving through the fur apron like it was made of wet paper. The man cried out and fell over almost at once. Carol Ann stared in wide-eyed terror at the body and the pool of blood that spread out from the wound.
"Oh… oh no, Charles," she croaked as she staggered to her feet, "no, no, no, you shouldn't have done that… he had been so kind so me…" - That was all she had time to say before the identity of the person wielding the flint knife was revealed in the flickering light from the roof fire.
Dumbstruck, Carol Ann stared at the shadowy figure who wasn't Charles, Spyros Antonakis or even one of the Filipino sailors.
It was a native woman: a broad, beefy, reddish-brown, long-haired warrior woman dressed in black fur and dark-brown cloth. She carried a spear in her left hand and a flint machete in her right - the weapon had been tied to her forearm so it couldn't be kicked out of her hand during the battle. Drops of red blood fell from the blade and stained the filthy floor. The warrior's forehead, shoulders and upper chest were covered in chalk dust which gave her a ghoulish appearance, especially since her sweat had drawn long stripes in the war paint.
The two women stared at each other for long seconds before the burning roof became too dangerous to stand under. The warrior woman grunted and waved Carol Ann towards her. When the blonde being was close enough to grab, she did so and yanked her prisoner's arm behind the back in a force-hold.
Carol Ann let out a long, pained cry and stood up on tip-toes to release the intense pressure on her shoulder. She wasn't allowed much rest - another second later, the warrior shoved her in the back and pushed her forward.
"Let go! You're hurting me… let go of me, you murderous bitch!" Carol Ann cried, trying to get herself untangled from the strong woman's hold. She wiggled this way, that way and every other way, but no matter what she did, the warrior woman kept a firm grip on her arm.
Being caught in the open in the middle of the all-out war that took place inside the camp didn't seem the world's best idea, so the warrior shoved Carol Ann in the back and forced her across the square to get out of the firing line before the blowgun darts that whistled past their ears could find a target.
The crackling fire from the ruined firepit had spread to one of the clay huts, and the flames were already licking up the walls. Back at the jail hut, the thatched roof gave up the ghost and collapsed down into the cell with a loud whoomph. The raging fires around the camp created massive clouds of foul-smelling smoke that drifted through the square and the gaps between the huts.
Here and there, a few brave souls poured buckets of water onto the fires, but the few men who formed the firelines between the well and the conflagrations were chopped down as quickly as the gaps in the lines were filled by new volunteers.
The warrior woman kept Carol Ann pressed up against the wall of a hut like she was supposed to keep her there for the time being. Another massive cloud of smoke helped obscure the two women, but when it dispersed, they were spotted by a couple of male natives who came at them with their blowguns. Growling, the warrior took up the fight.
With finesse and plenty of high-skill maneuvers, she dispatched them with her flint blade and her spear before they could even load the darts into the hollow reeds. Both men fell where they had stood with throats slashed from ear to ear to prevent them from using their blowguns after they had been taken out.
Carol Ann had tried to make a run for it while the warrior was busy with the men, but her escape lasted all of four seconds - then she found herself flat on her stomach with a faceful of dust and ashes after being tripped up.
The warrior yanked her upright and once again pressed her up against a wall. "You listen to me, you miserable- Oooof!" Carol Ann tried, but the warrior wasn't interested in listening to anything she had to say. To close the argument before it could be opened, the warrior mashed a knee into the blonde's gut.
They struggled back and forth for a while until the warrior once again squeezed Carol Ann up against the wall and growled a few choice words into her ear in the same language - and tone - the male natives had used.
"All right, all right… bitch," Carol Ann said, wincing from the bruise that was sure to develop where she had been kneed.
Out in the square, another female native wearing a similar uniform to the woman holding Carol Ann back was suddenly pierced clean through by a hunting arrow. With the tip of the arrow poking through her chest, she spun around in a circle and fell down. Moments later, the chief hunter broke through the clouds of smoke wielding a longbow. The next arrow was ready, and he pulled back the string while turning around searching for a target.
For once, the warrior woman pushed Carol Ann further into the shadows to get them out of sight.
They remained there until the chief hunter had moved on, but by then, Carol Ann had had a great idea. She wore heeled hiking boots and the warrior next to her had bare feet - a perfect recipe for disaster. Moving swiftly and silently, Carol Ann bent her knee and smashed the square heel of her boot down onto the warrior's toes with all her might. "That's for killing the jailer, you wretched savage!"
The fierce-looking warrior howled at the top of her lungs and let go of Carol Ann to tend to her mashed toes. A stream of angry, ugly words followed, but they were cut off like the flick of a switch when a clenched fist impacted directly on her chin.
It was the first punch Carol Ann had thrown in her life, and when her knuckles made contact with the warrior's jaw, the whack that was sent back up her wrist and arm convinced her it should be her last ever punch. "And that's for nearly breaking my shoulder before… oh… ouch!" she cried, waving her hand after the punch. "That hurt more than I thought it would… oh, damn!"
Despite Carol Ann's best efforts, the warrior hadn't been knocked out. The toes seemed to bother her a great deal more than the imprint on the side of her chin, and she lashed out at her prisoner at once to dish out a suitable punishment.
The warrior was only able to grab hold of Carol Ann's right sleeve, but since both women pulled in opposite directions at the same time, the seams burst and the navy-striped sleeve fell off into the warrior's hand.
Though the warrior hurled abuse at her, Carol Ann took full advantage of her opponent's temporary disability to leave in a fast run without looking back even once. She stormed around the nearest hut on her way to the wooden gate, but came to a screeching halt on the final stretch when she realized the sturdy gate was still closed. "But… but how did the wretched warriors get in? Think… think, Carol Ann… oh… oh! Ladders!" she cried and resumed running towards the perimeter wall at another location.
Before she could get there, she was caught up in a fierce battle where darts from the blowguns zipped back and forth between a group of male natives and three female warriors who were using a corner of a hut for cover. She didn't dare run between the potentially poisoned bolts, so she took a detour and ran the long way around the combatants.
Everything around her was chaos and confusion. Several dead bodies were lying where they had fallen in the middle of the square. Ahead of her and to the right, the chief hunter made a counterattack with his longbow, and the powerful sound of the bowstring releasing could be heard over even the cries of the people that were run through by his arrows.
Carrying on, Carol Ann made a run for it and zipped down the length of one of the clay huts. It turned out it was the rear side of the hut where the chieftain resided, but it didn't help her much - in fact, it hindered her, because the four male warriors in the chieftain's personal escort had set up a defensive position at the back of the hut from where they fired their blowguns at anything that moved, female or otherwise.
Carol Ann shook her head and spun around on her heel to get away before they would spot her. She ran back along the wall of the clay hut and made a hard turn that would take her across the small gap between two huts in no time. The second hut was the home of the elderly medicine man, but he had barricaded his door to keep the aggressors out.
More dead or wounded natives from both groups were lying at the well. With the fireline being attacked so effectively, nobody dared to take the buckets so the flickering flames were gobbling up the thatched roofs and everything else in record time.
Through the heat haze, Carol Ann caught a glimpse of the warrior woman who had held her captive - she was still hobbling along on her smashed toes. "Serves her right, that bitch," she mumbled, crouching down to present as small a target as possible. She scrunched up her face when she realized the hobbling warrior moved away from the central square and over to the perimeter wall. "Maybe that's where they have their ladders… it's now or never," she mumbled and got up in a hurry.
She zipped across the square and ducked behind the corner of one of the huts. Peeking around it, she tracked the hobbling woman shuffle over to a group of warriors who stood at the exact spot where Carol Ann wanted to go - at the assault ladders that were still leaning against the perimeter wall. A long groan escaped her lips, and she leaned her forehead against the clay hut in frustration.
---
It was too dangerous to stay there with the warrior women so close, so Carol Ann ran off back to the square after a final, sad look at the tall assault ladders that could have taken her to freedom.
Once she arrived there, the battle seemed to have died down or at least entered a phase where the warriors could regroup and the wounded could be tended to. The crackling noises created by the raging fires overpowered everything else, but it was possible to hear cries or pained moans if one listened carefully.
The chief hunter was still wielding his longbow, and he had assembled a team of seven male natives who swept forward with their blowguns loaded and ready to use. When the team came across a warrior woman who had merely been wounded in the melee, one of the natives dispatched her with a dart to the neck. The woman's back arched off the ground for several seconds before she collapsed into a boneless, lifeless heap.
Carol Ann witnessed it and gulped down a worried lump that formed in her throat. Absentmindedly, she reached up and touched the welt that she had received in the far smaller battle down near the beach. The tender skin around the welt had begun to sting again, but she still had the laced cloth the medicine man had shoved into her pocket to quell the smarting if it became too bad.
Grimacing, she hunched over and used a cloud of smoke as a perfect cover to zip across the square. What she was looking for, she had no idea. It was unlikely the warrior women had scaled the perimeter wall in more than one location, so that means of escape was out of the question, but perhaps she could get the main gates opened? Or at least trick the sentries into opening it for her - she would never know if she didn't try.
From one moment to the next, the cloud of smoke dispersed and literally blew her cover. Worse still, she found herself face to face with a group of male natives. She drew in a sharp breath and prepared herself for a new struggle, but they were unarmed and in fact as frightened and confused as she was - then she recognized them as the young men who had played the strange game that had appeared to be a cross between soccer and wrestling.
The young players jumped back and clearly didn't know what to do about the escaped prisoner. They glanced at each other and exchanged several words, but none that seemed to provide the clue they needed.
"Oh… if only I could communicate with you," Carol Ann said and wrung her hands. "I could ask you to help me open the gate so we could make a run for it into the jungle, but…" she continued, racking her brain to come up with something that wouldn't be seen as a threat. She tried to put out her hands with the palms up like she had seen someone do in a Tarzan movie, but it proved to be inadequate.
One of the young men pointed an index finger at Carol Ann and let out several barked words that didn't sound pleasant or complimentary. Shouting encouragement at his comrades, he rushed forward intending to grab her, but she was smaller and more agile and was able to zip away before they could get organized enough to seize her.
Sprinting out of the danger zone, Carol Ann didn't come to a stop until it was almost too late. In her mad haste to get away, she hadn't noticed that the team led by the chief hunter had caught a glimpse of her and had followed her around the square. She didn't realize she was in real trouble until a dart from a blowgun missed her neck by less than an inch. It was so close she could feel a wave of air tickle her as the lethal bolt flew past.
Her heart nearly burst out of her chest as she spun around and took in the gruesome view of the hunting party having her in their sights. The chief hunter's face was drawn in unbridled anger upon recognizing her. At once, his longbow was taut and loaded; the arrow ready to run her through at the drop of a finger.
Instead of panicking - though she did let out a brief squeal - she dove for cover and flung herself behind the nearest hut. Unfortunately, her landing crushed a cocoon that had been resting against the hut's plinth. Within seconds, dozens if not scores of aggrieved crawling insects burst out of the cracked cocoon and tore around to find the individual who had ruined their cozy nest.
Now Carol Ann really did scream. She jumped back to her feet in an almighty hurry and started beating herself down to brush all the little critters off her. Only a few had had time to climb onto her navy-striped blouse and sailor's pants, but the handful she did fling off was plenty.
"Insects here… insane savages there… God, this isn't my day…" she croaked, stomping her foot down onto a group of the six-legged crawlies. It didn't improve the mood of the other insects, but she had no time to play nice. "No… I need to get down to that gate if it kills me. I can't stay here!" she said and delivered swift death by boot-heel to another fat critter that was aiming to crawl up her pantleg.
She needed to get away from all opponents of the two and six-legged kind, so she hunched over and followed the edge of the clay hut. The chief hunter and his team had moved on, so she zipped out into the square and stormed off towards the sturdy, wooden gate.
By the time she made it there, further screams had been echoing through the camp. The screams had come from the warrior women as well as the male natives, so the battle seemed to be evening out. Two sentries were standing atop the perimeter wall with their blowguns ready. Carol Ann noticed they were looking in, not out, so she reckoned it meant all the enemies were already inside the camp.
Although it was a relative term in the middle of a war, the area around the main gate was quiet. None of the fires had reached that part of the camp yet, and the worst of the battles had taken place up at the square near the well, the jail hut and the chieftain's quarters.
Carol Ann thoroughly checked the ground for cocoons before she crouched down at the last corner of the last clay hut. The final thirty yards between the hut and the gate offered no protection, meaning the sentries would have a clear line of fire when she ran over there. Rubbing her brow, she tried to come up with a sound plan when reality suddenly caught up with her.
Out of nowhere, both sentries were hit by darts that zipped silently through the air. Carol Ann gasped as both natives dropped their weapons and began to dance around like in a trance. Their arms, legs and heads jerked and spasmed back and forth like they were grotesque puppets whose strings were controlled by an unseen, evil master.
One of the sentries came too close to the edge of the wall and simply toppled over like a latter-day Humpty-Dumpty. He fell twenty feet down and made a bone-crunching impact with the hard surface, but even that didn't stop his body from twitching and spasming.
Carol Ann gulped and covered her mouth with her hand when she got a look at the native's face. His eyes were only showing the whites, indicating he was dead - but his body kept jerking around for a long minute until he was finally allowed his eternal rest. The dart from the blowgun was still sticking out of his neck, and Carol Ann once more reached up to touch the welt that protruded from her own skin. Gulping again, she realized just how lucky she had been. "The one that hit me must have had a low dose of whatever venom they use… oh God, thank you for looking out for me," she mumbled, wiping her clammy brow with a trembling hand.
She couldn't hide behind the final hut forever, so she jumped up and ran over to the main gate. Though the cumbersome hiking boots held her back, she ran fast enough to cover the final stretch in no time. At the gate, she spun around and checked that she wasn't about to be ambushed before she went to work removing the sturdy crossbeam that prevented the gate from being opened.
It was far, far heavier than it appeared. Even using all her strength, she could only lift one end at a time which wasn't enough to get it to fall out of the two forks it was resting in. She tried once, twice, and then a final time before she had to admit defeat for plan A.
Sweating like a pig and panting like crazy, Carol Ann ran down to the center of the beam and took a shot at plan B by attempting to lift it there. It was even heavier at the center and she just about tore every muscle in her back on her first try with nothing to show for it. Groaning, she smashed her fist down onto the beam like she was hoping it would break in two. "It's no use… dammit!" she cried and gave it another, smaller thump. "There must be a way out of here… how did the sentries get up there? There aren't any staircases… but there must be something…"
Searching for a way to get to the gangway atop the wall, she turned around and found herself face to face with four warrior women instead. Two of them held their blowguns ready, the other two carried a net between them. One of the four was the one with the mashed toes, and her face told a tale of being in a pretty lousy mood on the whole.
"No!" Carol Ann cried and tried to zip through a gap between the broad-shouldered women, but they were too fast and grabbed her with ease. They took great pleasure in throwing the smaller blonde around between them, and laughed when she was tripped up and landed on all four on the ground.
"Oh, you miserable bitches… you're a disgrace to womanhood!" Carol Ann roared, but the fun and games ended when the hobbling warrior and one of the others threw the net over her and tied two knots at once to keep her restrained.
In an instant, she kicked and screamed to get out of the net, but all she succeeded in doing was to get herself tied up even worse. Before long, her arms and legs were so entangled in the netting that all she could do was to sit down on the ground, and even that proved difficult. The fire slowly left her and a sense of deep resignation rolled over her like a tidal wave. Giving up, she sighed deeply and shook her head in defeat. "Just kill me now and be done with it… I can't do all that again. I just can't… just can't…"
The warrior whose toes had been mashed hobbled over to the net and used her good foot to shove Carol Ann down flat onto the ground. Leaning down, she clenched her fist and pulled her arm back like she wanted to repay the favor of getting thumped on the chin, but another of the warriors stopped her with a few words.
Carol Ann breathed a sigh of relief, but her reprieve was short-lived. Before long, the women had found a carrier branch similar to the one the male hunters had used to transport her there. The branch was poked through the net, and the whole package was lifted off the ground and onto the shoulders of the two strongest warriors.
Moving with stealth and in complete silence, the warriors set off for the assault ladders so they could begin their trek back to their home camp.
Once again, Carol Ann found herself swaying back and forth inside a wide-meshed net. Once again, her legs had been forced into an uncomfortable fetal position - and once again, she was being carried into the unknown by barbaric savages who cared little about her, and who could be delivering her to a fate worse than death.
*
*
CHAPTER 6
The net swayed back and forth as the warrior women climbed over boulders and cleared muddy patches on their way home. Carol Ann was bumped around on occasion, but all in all, it was a smoother ride than she had experienced when the male natives carried her. The darkness of the night in the alien, terrifying jungle made it nigh-on impossible for her to see a hand in front of her face, but the warriors seemed to know the route by heart.
At one point, they moved closer to the shore as waves could be heard crashing against rocks not too far away. It was too dark to see anything, but the gentle breeze that came in from the ocean carried the characteristic smell of salt on the leading edge of the wind. Beyond that, it was a calm night. The palm trees stood stock still which in turn meant the animal calls traveled much further. Now and then, the strange, chipmunk-like chirps could be heard as clear as day, and she could also pick up faint sniffing from down on the floor of the jungle.
Above them, though below the crowns of the palm trees, the very first bird Carol Ann had encountered on the island circled like it was waiting impatiently for the intruders to clear off so it could get back to hunting rodents and other nocturnal animals. It had roughly the size and coloring of a hawk, but the shrill squawk it produced was markedly different.
Not that it mattered. Carol Ann had long since given up. Looking at nothing at all through a thousand-mile stare, she leaned her head against the netting and waited for the inevitable. With the brutality displayed by the warrior women at the camp, she half-expected to be sacrificed to some kind of idol the moment they arrived in whichever camp the women came from. Or maybe they really were cannibals who had decided to spruce up their diet with a little white meat.
She was dead-tired, she was thirsty, she had the worst headache she had ever had, and she reeked to high heaven of sweat, smoke and urine from the old stain on her full-legged sailor's pants. In short, she was just hunky-dory.
Sighing, she leaned her head to the other side to get a change of scenery that she wouldn't look at either. The warrior women in the small column hadn't spoken a word to each other the entire way, but she couldn't figure out if it was because they had nothing to say to each other, or if they had orders to always maintain complete silence on night raids.
Whichever it was, it didn't really matter. She couldn't communicate with them no matter what she tried, she had already experienced that countless times with the male natives. A thought of the murdered jailer who had helped her above and beyond what he needed to moved into her mind's eye. It was an unnecessary killing - and an excessively brutal one at that - and the murderer walked among the group of warriors.
"If I have any say in the matter, I won't let her get away with that crime," Carol Ann mumbled to herself, shaking her head. "Of course, I don't… oh, he was so friendly to me. How ironic that the men helped me… like the medicine man… and the women I encountered killed everyone who stood in their way. What kind of barbarians are these people…?"
Since no answer would ever be forthcoming to that particular question, Carol Ann let out a long, slow sigh and settled down to watch the jungle go by.
-*-*-*-
The trek through the deep, dark jungle was about to come to an end. The familiar scents of burning torches and wood smoke permeated the air though Carol Ann couldn't yet see the camp or fortified position they were headed for. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but it appeared that many trees had been felled in the area; perhaps to provide building material or to prevent the male natives from using them as cover.
The warrior women carrying her had gone through a gradual climb for some time, and when a gap appeared in the tree crowns above, she could see the bare, mountainous cone that she had studied while she, Charles and the others had been at the plateau. It stood out quite clearly against the dark sky; the rock appeared to glitter almost like it contained quartz or another form of crystal.
At the plateau, she had learned the cone marked the approximate halfway point of the island and that it was located at the coast in the north-east. Now, the cone was to the left of her which meant they were traveling south, south-east. She was headed for a part of the island they hadn't seen from the Empress ; it had to be on higher ground than most of their initial jungle-bound adventure, or even the camp inhabited by the male natives she had just been snatched from.
A sentry who popped up out of nowhere raised her arm in the air and stopped the returning party of raiders. She and the lead warrior spoke to each other before the sentry shuffled down the line to take a look at their new prisoner. Leaning down, she scrunched up her face into a puzzled frown at the sight of Carol Ann's fair skin and blonde hair. While she poked her head into the net, she said a few words to the lead warrior who shrugged in return. Grunting, the sentry moved back and waved them on.
After the excitement had died down, Carol Ann sighed and once more leaned her head against the net. The swaying resumed as the warriors carrying her set off on the last part of their journey.
---
The camp populated by the warrior women was markedly different from the one built and inhabited by the male natives. There, the huts hadn't been placed according to any plan but had been thrown about seemingly at random inside the clay perimeter wall. The female camp followed a different, far more stringent setup.
It still had an outer defensive position in the shape of a fifteen-feet tall wooden fence that enclosed the entire area only interrupted by the main gate and a sentry tower at each corner, but everything inside the fence was laid out in a strict, military fashion: Nine, ninety-feet long wooden barracks with thatched roofs were placed in groups of three in a crescent-shaped pattern with their end walls all pointing at a central square. The barrack in the middle of the second group had open sides and was equipped with benches.
To follow the methodical pattern, a clay amphora holding three lit torches in each had been put up for every thirty paces or so lining the square and the pathway from the gates to the central area. Another, larger, bonfire was burning merrily just off the center of the central square.
A large, richly decorated structure fit for a chieftain - or a queen - stood on the south side of the central square. The rear side of the two-story wooden building was protected by an entire company of warrior women guarding a moat filled with hundreds of coated spikes.
Similar to its counterpart in the male camp, the central square saw a well and a public prison - but instead of a single low hut, it had three bell-shaped, wooden cages suspended ten feet off the ground by sturdy cranes.
The far end of the camp saw clusters of lower, smaller huts, many of which had chimneys protruding from the thatched roofs. Here and there, orange light from small fireplaces could be seen as glowing dots that penetrated the darkness. The huts didn't follow the same strict plan as the barracks and were placed a little more organically.
Despite the late hour, a cheer rose from the women at the camp as the raiding party appeared and walked along the short stretch between the main gate and the central square. Further cheers rose when they flaunted the net with their blonde prisoner.
Women of all ages and sizes - including a few who were pregnant - appeared from the barracks and ran over to see what was going on. They spoke in excited tones and leaned down to examine the strange, blonde creature brought back in the net. A young girl of no more than six summers poked an index finger through the mesh and jabbed Carol Ann in the ribs just to see if she was actually a woman despite her odd clothes and coloring.
Carol Ann howled out loud which sent the native women scurrying away though fits of laughter proved they were amused rather than frightened. "Ouch! Keep your fingers to yourselves! Please!" she cried, rubbing her side. "Oh, this is intolerable… why can't I wake up and discover it's all been a horrid nightmare…"
The warrior women carrying her brought the net onto the central square and stopped below the first of the three cages. It was empty, unlike the other two. The excited spectators followed them and created a living circle a few steps back so they wouldn't get in the way.
Carol Ann bared her teeth in a horrified grimace when she saw the state of the corpse in the third and final cage in the flickering light from the torches. It had probably been a male native, but it was hard to tell since there was hardly anything left to identify it as a human being. All that remained were bones, tufts of dark hair and a little reddish-brown skin here and there that had somehow survived being scorched by the relentless sun and boiled by the humidity.
The second cage saw another male native, but he was asleep - or perhaps so recently deceased he hadn't yet begun to decompose.
A full-body shiver fell over Carol Ann. She couldn't look at the gruesome cages so she closed her eyes and turned her head away from the horrors. All she had room to do inside the net was to rub her arms, so she did. Moments later, she found herself down on the ground, once again dumped out of the net without warning.
The hard landing drove the air out of her with a loud whoosh, and she had to roll over onto her right side to catch her breath. Her head throbbed, her back ached from her neck down, and her legs ached from the ankles up. There wasn't an inch of her that wasn't sore or aching, even out to her fingernails that were all frayed or cracked.
Groaning, she tried to sit up to get the buzzing flies out of her head, but she wasn't allowed the dignity of doing it herself. Like she had been so many times already during the living nightmare, she was manhandled to her feet by a pair of strong hands that grabbed hold of her arms with no regard to her well-being.
A warrior woman the size of a small house came up to stand in front of Carol Ann. She assumed an aggressive stance with her legs parted and her hands akimbo. Like the warrior who had killed the jailer, she wore black fur over dark-brown cloth that covered all her soft bits - not that she had many. She had long, flowing hair that was nearly black, and her skin was the same reddish-brown tone as the male natives. Her facial features were similar as well, with a wide nose, high cheekbones and dark-brown eyes that were just a fraction smaller than Carol Ann's.
The woman started speaking to her new prisoner, but she stopped when it became painfully obvious the blonde woman wasn't listening.
Carol Ann couldn't find enough energy to care about all their nonsense. Shaking her head, she just stared at the warrior who appeared like a real brute in the flickering, orange light.
One of the women holding Carol Ann's arms gave her a shove and said a few words that no doubt meant she should respect the warrior in front of her. Since one shove wasn't enough, another soon followed.
Carol Ann bared her teeth in a feral grimace and grabbed hold of the native's arm. "If you do that again, you bitch, I'm going to… going to… make you wish you hadn't!" she cried hoarsely, answering the shove with one of her own. "I'm not the violent kind, but you lot give me no choice! Get off my back, or… or I'll make you remember me the hard way!"
Though the other warriors and the spectators hadn't understood the actual words, the meaning had come across loud and clear. They ooooh'ed and looked to the senior warrior who was still standing in front of the prisoner.
Carol Ann clenched her fists and growled deep in her throat. She knew she wouldn't last one second against the square-built warrior, but even the most saintly of women had a limit - and hers had just been reached. "Why are you even treating me this way?" she growled which earned her another oooh. "I would expect this kind of barbaric behavior from men… but you're women, dammit! We have plenty of things working against us as it is… we need to stick together to overcome them, not stick a knife in each other's backs!"
She thumped her fist into her open palm in frustration when it registered that nobody could be bothered to listen to her. The warriors and the regular women at the camp were far too busy with the fact they were being watched by a tall person who had come out of the richly decorated two-story building to lean against the rail of a porch.
All around Carol Ann, an excited buzz spread among the crowd before everyone piped down and bowed their head to show the proper respect for their ruler. After a few seconds and several mumbled curses, she thought it most prudent to do the same so she wouldn't draw any negative attention to herself. Head held low, she squinted at the tall individual on the porch just to gawk at the type of woman who was queen of such murderous savages. It didn't bring her much as the woman's face was obscured by the shadows.
The queen waved her hand as she strolled further along the porch. The little gesture meant the natives in the crowd could once again be allowed to speak, so an excited murmur rippled between the many people.
The wave had also been a command to the house-sized warrior who crossed the central square and ran up a short flight of stairs with surprising agility for a woman of her size. The two women exchanged a few words in the language of the natives before the warrior waved one of the members of the raiding party over to them.
It just so happened to be the one with the crushed toes. Hobbling along, the warrior whose pride was hurt even worse than her foot shot Carol Ann a dark Evil Eye on her way past her before she climbed the stairs - going quite a lot slower than the larger warrior - and provided a mission debriefing to the queen. There were plenty of gestures and heated words, most of which directed at Carol Ann.
Now and then, the queen nodded or grunted, but she never moved out of the shadows, much to Carol Ann's frustration.
The debriefing ended with both warriors descending the stairs and crossing the central square. The hobbling one moved away with another Evil Eye as her parting shot, but the house-sized one headed straight for Carol Ann. Once she was there, she spoke a long sentence while she pointed at the two-story building.
Carol Ann scrunched up her face and dug in her heels. "Well, isn't that too bad. No, I have no intention of bowing and scraping to your queen. If she wants to talk to me, she can damn well come down here and- Ohhh!"
The large warrior understood the meaning if not the words, but an order was an order. Leaning down, she grabbed hold of the far smaller woman and lifted her up like she weighed nothing at all. Grunting, she put the fair-skinned stranger over her shoulder, spun around and stomped across the square with a firm grip on the kicking, screaming, howling and swearing Carol Ann.
The feisty package was delivered when Carol Ann was unceremoniously dumped on the porch in front of the queen's sandaled feet. She jumped upright as quickly as her aching bones would allow and began hurling an endless stream of semi-incoherent abuse at the large warrior. She finished off by slamming her arms over her chest and spinning around - but the abuse got stuck in her throat when she saw the five shrunken heads that had been nailed to the wall of the richly decorated building.
Her arms slipped down from her chest and her face lost all color as she took in the gruesome sight of the five severed heads whose visages were all frozen in an unnatural, scrunched-up expression - a result of the embalming process. They had the skin color of the natives, but it was impossible to tell if they had been men or women. Gulping down a bitter surge, she turned around slowly to look at the queen who could be responsible for the atrocity.
She had expected to see a ghoul, but the tall, dark-haired woman cut a striking figure. Standing at nearly six feet in her sandals, the queen - who wore a black fur bandolier that covered her chest and a short loincloth that hid the lower essentials - appeared to be in her early to mid-thirties. Her skin color was a lighter, more bronzed tone than that of her subjects. Although she had the high cheekbones so common among the natives, her features could be mistaken for Caucasian with a softer face and a narrower nose compared to the other indigenous people on the mysterious island.
Carol Ann continued to stare gap-mouthed at the other woman. The things that mesmerized her to the point of forgetting to breathe were the queen's eyes. They weren't dark-brown but a shade of blue that hit her straight in the gut. Eyes like that were never seen outside the world of showbusiness or even fashion photography - but now they appeared in the face of the ruler of a tribe of murderous native women somewhere in the South Pacific.
Struck dumb and speechless, Carol Ann didn't even have the mental capacity to complain when the house-sized warrior picked her up again and carried her inside the richly decorated building.
Once again, she was thrown down onto the floor, but this time, she landed on a soft, woven carpet instead of the hard ground. Groaning loudly at the aches and pains from all her limbs, muscles and bones that cried out their displeasure at being kicked around like a lame mule the whole time, she sat up and dusted off her filthy hands.
The interior of the first floor of the building was a rich, lavish affair. It was a large, single room made entirely of treated planks that had been chalked white. Beyond the woven carpet on the floor that seemed to have been made of dried palm leaves, the room had an opulent throne at one end and more regular seating arrangements at the other in the shape of wooden benches and footstools.
Certain areas on the walls between the throne and the benches were painted red instead of the white chalk used elsewhere, and curious letters had been pressed into the sticky surface. Huge palm leaves were standing in clay amphoras on either side of the throne, ready to be used by devoted natives as an effective, manual air conditioning system when the humidity would get too high for the queen to do much but sit on her throne all day.
The woman in question cleared her throat and waltzed in through the opened double doors that led to the square. While the large warrior closed the doors from the outside, the tall, regal queen made a beeline for the throne where she sat down after sweeping out her loincloth so it wouldn't get in the way.
Carol Ann chuckled darkly and rubbed her filthy face with a hand that was even filthier. "I don't know why you bother. I haven't met any of you lot yet who can speak the Queen's English… and I mean the real queen in England, not some-"
"Tell me, are you always this negative?"
Carol Ann clammed up at once and stared wide-eyed at the person sitting on the throne. Either she had lost her mind for good, or the queen had spoken to her - and not only that, but in an American accent. It was American like it had been spoken a generation earlier, but it was unmistakably the type of English used in the United States. "Wh- what?" she croaked, trying to make her tired brain grasp the ridiculous notion that she was actually having a conversation with a savage native who had five shrunken heads hanging on her wall.
"Are you always this negative? Ah, never mind. Welcome to my realm! Welcome to Ka'una-Kameha, the island of the Mu-Kwanda," the queen said and made a sweeping gesture with her hand while she grinned from ear to ear.
---
It took Carol Ann several minutes to come to terms with the fact that the queen did indeed speak American English. It was all getting just a little too surreal, and she needed to pluck several hairs off her arm to realize that it was happening at this point in time in this dimension - and to her. "I have a couple of million questions, but no brain left to process them," she mumbled in a monotone as she took in the queen's appearance.
"I'm sure it must be a shock," the queen said and shuffled around on the throne. She crossed her long, bare legs the other way and rearranged the short loincloth so the fully-dressed Englishwoman wouldn't be scandalized.
"A shock? Oh, no. Being shot with a dart from a blowgun, that was a shock. Being carried in a net… twice… that was a shock. Being thrown in a stinking jail hut, that was a shock. Seeing several people get killed before my eyes, that was a shock… probably the worst one, actually. But this? Nope. Freaky things happen naturally on this island. I know that now."
The queen leaned her head back and let out a burst of laughter. "My, my! It's been too long since I've spoken to someone with a sense of humor. The natives here are… how can I put it? Somewhat dry."
Throwing her arms in the air, Carol Ann underscored the gesture by groaning long and hard. "Oh God, I have lost my mind! What is going on here… please?!"
"Pardon me, I've been here so long I've lost my manners. Allow me to introduce myself. My name used to be Alexandra Burnside… but now I'm Queen Lexa of the Mu-Kwanda," Lexa said, flipping her long, black hair out of the fur bandolier to add a little theatrics. "I was informed by one of my best spies that a blonde, fair-skinned woman from the west had arrived on the island yesterday morning. I needed someone to talk to and here you are. Of course, my old adversary got to you first… but it was nothing my raiding party couldn't handle. Right?"
Carol Ann just sat there with her mouth wide open.
"Oh, that's a charming look. I'll bet you can catch a lot of flies using that trick. Say, I've told you my name. And yours is…?"
It took Carol Ann another moment or two to connect enough brain cells to get her throat and vocal cords to work together to form actual words and not just inarticulate grunts. "Uh… Carol Ann Lawrence. I'm… I'm…"
"Tell me, are you from New Zealand? You sound a little Kiwi to me."
"No… England. I was born in greater London and moved to a small village east of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire…. but lately I've live in the US… in California."
"Oh, I see." When nothing further came out of the shell-shocked blonde, Lexa chuckled and slapped her hands down onto her bare thighs. Once she had observed the supposed prisoner at a safe distance for long enough, she leaned forward on the opulent chair and let her eyes run over Carol Ann's unusual clothing. "Is that one-sleeved look all the rage in Paris this year?"
"Huh? Oh… no," Carol Ann said and looked down at her bare arm and the sorry threads that were all that was left of the right sleeve of one of her favorite blouses. "No, that was the work of the warrior you sent to spring me from jail. The one whose toes I stepped on. What's her name?"
"Q'uola. Why?"
Carol Ann chewed on her lips while she debated with herself on whether or not to mention the unnecessary killing of the jailer. She had promised herself that if she could do anything about it, she would - and now that opportunity had presented itself to her sooner than anticipated. "She murdered a man in cold blood. The jailer. A man who had been kind to me and who didn't deserve to die like that."
"Did she now? Good. Then she followed my orders."
"You cannot be serious…" Carol Ann croaked, furrowing her brow.
"Of course I am. We're at war with those people."
"Who? The men?"
"The natives living in the other camp. Yes, the men."
"But… why?!"
Queen Lexa of the Mu-Kwanda performed a casual, and suitably royal, shrug. "I have no idea why. It's always been thus. I wouldn't be surprised if the two tribes fought each other a million years ago at the birth of the world… or that they'll continue to do so until the earth explodes. The only time they stop fighting is during the monsoon season. Then, they come together to hold grand orgies where they do nothing but have sex for a month so they can create new generations. After that, they kill each other again."
Carol Ann opened her mouth to shoot the queen a stinging reply, but found the fire had left her once again. Instead, she let out a long sigh and propped her head up on her arms. "I thought this was real, but no. It's all a nightmare. Just a damn nightmare…"
"Oh, no. This is real," Lexa said and got up from the throne. "I'll bet you're hungry. I'll call for some food, and… dare I say it? Water to draw a bath, because… oh boy," she continued, fanning her nose.
"Well, pardon me for not staying fresh and womanly after the rotten day and night I've had. It hasn't all been peaches and whipped cream, I can tell you," Carol Ann said and picked at the dried, yellow stain on her sailor's pants. "Queen Lexa… did your spies tell you anything about the men who were with me yesterday morning? One of them was my husband… and… and I must admit I'm worried about him."
Lexa shook her head and strolled over to the double doors. Putting her hands on the knobs, she turned around and shot Carol Ann a look that was darker and more solemn than usual. "I'm afraid she didn't. I don't know anything about the fate of your husband."
-*-*-*-
After borrowing a sponge and a bucketful of cool water to rid herself of the worst filth and grime, Carol Ann came back down a wooden staircase from the second floor room she had used. She was wet-combed and much fresher on the whole, but her clothes were still grungy and torn.
A young native woman was ready to take the bucket and the sponge, but she was so busy gawking at the blond, wet-combed hair and the freshly scrubbed, pink skin that she could hardly keep her mouth closed. Queen Lexa chuckled and helped the young woman on her way with a little pat on the rear.
"Thank you for lending me some water," Carol Ann said as she moved back into the throne room on the first floor. "I must admit it's an improvement… though the clothes are still somewhat disgusting."
Lexa chuckled again and pointed at one of the benches that Carol Ann could sit on while they spoke. "Oh, it's a big improvement. My nostrils are grateful, Carol Ann. And don't worry, we have plenty of furs you can borrow. Have a seat here on the bench. We have so much to talk about."
Carol Ann shot her hostess a look that proved she still hadn't come to terms with the surreal situation of meeting a blue-eyed, gorgeous American woman posing as the queen of a tribe of natives in a two-storey palace inside a military camp run by women on a mysterious island that wasn't on any charts. "That's right, we do," she said as she sat down on the bench and stretched out her tired legs. "And most importantly, how do I get back to the boat I arrived on?"
"Let's eat first. I've ordered the grand buffet… all the splendors Ka'una-Kameha has to offer. It should be here at any moment." Lexa had barely finished speaking the sentence before a knocking was heard on the double doors. "Ah. Right on time."
She let out a few words in the native language before she strolled over to the throne and sat down to look suitably regal for the natives who would bring the late-night snacks.
Three young women of no more than fifteen summers came into the throne room carrying bowls filled with nuts and colorful, exotic berries and fruit. The last of the three held a jug in her hands as well as a wooden mug. They bowed their heads at the queen before they put the various items down on the bench close to where Carol Ann sat. All three young women had been brought up to speed on the latest gossip by the native who had provided the water, so they stole many curious glances at Carol Ann's pink skin and blonde hair.
Lexa spoke a short sentence which saw the three young women turn around and leave the throne room in perfect goose-step. The queen waited for the double doors to close once more before she got up and strolled down to the bench. "Let's eat," she said and popped a walnut-like cluster in her mouth.
"Well, it does look tempting," Carol Ann said and scooped up a few of the exotic berries. Chewing on them, she found them to be just the right combination of sweet and tart. She smiled from ear to ear when she noticed the jug contained the fruit juice she had tasted at the male camp. Pouring herself a large mugful, she held it up to salute the queen. "Cheers," she said before she chugged it down in no time flat.
"Oh, you like that, do you?" Lexa said, taking a few more nuts. Sitting down on the edge of the bench, she leaned over to put an arm across the top of the backrest in a pose that could be interpreted as flirtatious. It evolved from flirtatious to downright sexy when she crossed her long, bare legs, propped her head up on the hand that rested atop the backrest and shot her guest a long, husky, pale-blue gaze.
Noticing the pose - it was hard not to - Carol Ann felt the beginnings of a blush tainting her cheeks. The body language said Lexa was flirting; the tone of her voice said she was flirting, and above all, the pleasant little tingle that rolled around inside Carol Ann insisted she was being flirted with.
It was certainly a departure from the recent state of her romantic life. Charles was anything but a flirt, and their marriage hadn't seen much romance since she had walked back down the aisle arm in arm with her new husband after saying 'I do.' And now a woman flirted with her. A gorgeous woman. The pleasant tingle that was still on the loose inside her whispered in her ear that it was something it, and she, could get used to.
Nodding, she discreetly wiped her lips on her sleeve. Since the blouse was ruined already, another stain wouldn't matter a bit. "I do, yes. I had it at the other camp."
"Oh?" Lexa said, wagging her sandaled foot which only added to her already strong allure.
"Yes," Carol Ann said and stole a glance at the legs connected to the wagging foot. Gulping down the berry juice, she returned to the food before the queen caught her peeping. "Tell me… when I was there, a hunting party brought in a black creature that looked like a bear. The nuts and berries are great, but the men were able to make a wonderfully tasty meat soup that I-"
"Meat soup?!" Lexa said and bolted upright. She rose from the bench with such a start that it appeared a woodlouse or an earwig had chomped on her cheeks. "You had meat soup? And you're asking for more?! Women don't eat meat!"
The queen's surprising reaction made Carol Ann jump up so fast she dropped several nuts out of the palm of her hand. "I- I- I- I beg your p- pardon, Queen Lexa… I- I didn't think it was, uh… uh… taboo to eat meat…"
"Well, it is!"
"I've always eaten meat…"
"You shall do so no longer! That is a royal decree!"
Carol Ann stared at the dark-haired woman with the firm conviction that it was Lexa of the Mu-Kwanda who had lost her mind, not she. "Well, I beg your pardon, Queen Lexa, but I'm not one of your subjects. I decide what I eat… not you. When I moved to the United States, not even my battle axe mother-in-law could make me give up my shepherd's pies… and steak and kidney pies… and bangers and mash… and the Sunday roast… and my soft-boiled eggs and fried bacon for breakfast-"
Each mention of the meaty dishes added another level to the horrified grimace that was etched onto Lexa's face.
"- For the first several months after I had moved into the Lawrence family mansion, I drove the kitchen staff to desperation with all my strange requests for British food. They've learned to humor me. But the long and short of it is, I will not give up my meat."
Queen Lexa was quiet for a long time before she scooped up a handful of exotic berries to calm her nerves. "Well, I can see we need to have a number of long, persuasive conversations to ease you into your new life here," she mumbled while she chewed on the juicy berries.
"Don't bother. I'm not staying."
Lexa chuckled as the shock brought on by the mentioning of the forbidden meat slowly left her system. Sitting down again, she reached out to pat Carol Ann's bare arm. "That's what I said when I arrived. And look at me now. I'm the Queen of the Mu-Kwanda."
"How long have you been here?" Carol Ann said while she poured herself another mugful of the fruit juice.
"Oh… I'm not sure. What year is it?"
"1953."
"Really? Then I've been here for fifteen years."
"Oh, God!" Carol Ann cried and slammed the jug down onto the bench. "I'm not staying here on this Godforsaken island for fifteen years! I'm not staying here for fifteen days! I want to get out of here, get back aboard the Empress and return to the real world! Now!"
The Queen smiled and put out her hands in an invitation for a comforting, little squeeze. It didn't come, so she put her hands in her lap and let out a brief sigh. "I can understand your concern. It must be quite a frightening experience for you."
"You don't say!"
Tension ran high for a brief moment before everything settled down again. The queen assumed a darker expression as she seemed to remember something from her own past. "I worked as a deckhand on my father's deep sea fishing trawler when I was in my teens. During a bad storm, I was thrown overboard… I have no idea how I survived, but the currents swept me along and brought me onto the same sandy beach where you arrived yesterday morning."
Carol Ann had to gulp down her annoyance at the whole thing before she could answer in a civil voice. Clearing her throat, she took the mug of juice and downed a long sip. "That must have been a nightmare for you too. You must miss your father and your family so much…"
"I did at first, but then I found a new family here on Ka'una-Kameha," the Queen said and fiddled with her long fingers. "The worst part of the deal is thinking about the period of grief my parents must have gone through after my apparent death. My mother was strongly against the entire notion of going to sea, but my father was insistent I learned his trade… he was a fourth generation fisherman. I was supposed to be the fifth. We had our base on Cook Island."
The two women fell silent for a little while until Carol Ann let out a mumbled "Fifteen years… that's 1938. God, there's so much world history you don't know about…"
"Well, that's one of the reasons why I brought you here. I wanted to speak with you," Lexa said with a shrug. "So, anyway, I suspect our first experiences of this island are much the same. I was found by the male natives who brought me up to their camp-"
"Oh! The medicine man… the old medicine man!" Carol Ann said and forgot her annoyance for a while. "I spoke to him and I thought he recognized a few English words…"
"He probably did because I spoke to him at length when I was there," Lexa said with a little smile. "He treated my scrapes and bruises when I was brought to their camp. After a few weeks, I was handed over to the female natives in a prisoner exchange and I've been here ever since. I had to go through an initiation ritual before I was welcomed into the tribe, but it made me a full member and I earned their respect."
"Oh… initiation ritual?" Carol Ann said and slowed down her chewing. "Why do I get the feeling it was bloody and horrible?"
"Oh, it never turned bloody and it wasn't really that horrible. I had to survive the perils of the jungle for five days without any help. I slept under the stars, I ate berries and fruit, I found a spring with cold water that came down from the mountain… and I escaped the predators."
Carol Ann forgot all about her food and simply stared at the older woman. "Oh God… the king of the jungle…"
"Uh… beg' pardon?"
"The king of… the… the beast that makes those loud roars. My husband dubbed it the king of the jungle."
"A pretty apt name, actually," Lexa said and leaned forward to pat Carol Ann's arm. "Yes, that thing. That's the bear-like creature with the black fur and the tusks you wanted to eat before. I met one but managed to outsmart it. If I hadn't, I would have been its dinner. And that thing does eat meat. Raw meat."
Carol Ann broke out in a shiver and lost all her appetite.
"But never mind all that now," Lexa said and crossed her long legs the other way in a return to the original, flirtatious pose. "Speaking of dinner… are you satisfied with our food? Beyond the lack of meat, I mean?" - The closing comment was delivered with a wink and the tip of a pink tongue just peeking out of her mouth.
Looking down at the nuts and berries that suddenly didn't look so attractive, Carol Ann could only mumble a "Sure" and take a juicy slice of fruit to appease her hostess. She glanced up at the mesmerizing, pale-blue eyes and wondered if there was a dark side to them as well. She had an inkling there might be. "Lexa… how did you get to be their queen? I mean… they don't seem to be too friendly-minded toward westerners?"
"Now that part was bloody and horrible," Lexa said in a voice that turned just a bit more intense.
Carol Ann had just popped the slice of fruit in her mouth, but the horror lurking behind the queen's casual comment made it grow to gargantuan proportions on her tongue. Spitting it out would be disrespectful and therefore out of the question, so she emptied the mug with the fruit juice to flush everything down.
Her eyes slid over to the wall separating the throne room from the central square. The items she was looking for were on the other side of the wall and thus not visible, but their mere existence was enough to make her stomach churn. "The shrunken heads?" she whispered.
"Yes," Lexa said and smoothed down her short loincloth. "Now, where should I begin…?"
*
*
CHAPTER 7
Carol Ann moved out to the edge of the bench to listen to what would no doubt be a gruesome tale. Narrowing her eyes, she studied the queen's face as the older woman went through a phase of quiet reflection. The more she looked, the more she could see the steel behind the baby blues. The queen could crack jokes and be jovial, that was right there on the surface, but there was a certain gleam in her eyes that proved she could also serve out harsh punishment and do so without hesitation. They had only spoken for less than half an hour, but it was clear to Carol Ann that Lexa, or Alexandra as she had been known, was a deep and complex woman.
"The first several years of my life here," Lexa said and shuffled around on the bench, "didn't see much development. I was a common member of the tribe. At first, I was given all the assignments that no one else wanted… like emptying the squat-pots. After a few years, I moved up in the hierarchy because of my size, my strength and my ability to learn what the young women my age were taught, like the intricacies of the native language. There had been other westerners here in the past, typically sailors who had been washed ashore like me, but they had all been outcasts in one way or the other… mostly because they had been unable to learn the difficult language. Later on, I became one of the raiders. Then I became a chief raider. After a-"
"How many men have you killed?"
The question hung between the two women until Lexa shrugged. "A few. All raiders have. I know it'll shock an unspoiled soul like you, but that's how we conduct our business here on Ka'una-Kameha."
"Well, it's barbaric."
"That may be. Where was I? Oh yes, after leading a successful raid against the other camp where we didn't lose a single warrior, I was promoted to be on the previous queen's staff. After a couple of months, I learned that two of the senior warriors were scheming against her. I had other plans, so I couldn't allow that. I informed the queen of their intent. She took care of business, and I became the senior advisor… you could call me the vice-president, ha ha."
Carol Ann's jaw slipped down her chest at the casual descriptions of betrayal, backstabbing and ultimately murder. "Took care of business… she had them killed?"
"Yes and no. They died, but she did it herself. Beheaded them out on the square to deter others from cooking up similar plans. Oh… that look on your face tells me I've shocked you again."
"Shocked isn't the word!" Carol Ann cried and threw her hands in the air. "You really are primitive savages, the lot of you! What did you do to gain the title? Poison her food? Kick her down the stairs? Organize a little hunting accident? Or just slit her throat while she was sleeping? What?"
"Oh, such a rich imagination in someone who looks so innocent. The previous queen died, yes. Of natural causes. An infection… our basic medicine can't cure that."
"Wasn't that convenient," Carol Ann grumbled.
"It was, yes! And then, I assumed the throne. It caused some ruckus since I was the first non-native to reign, but it all worked out in the end."
"How long did it take for someone else to scheme against you?"
"Oh… a month or so."
Carol Ann let out a grunt that turned into a long, slow sigh. She shook her head and looked around the throne room. It was opulent and richly decorated, but it was only to hide the fact that blood was pouring from every single square inch of wood inside it. "Paranoia must be raging like wild bulls here… and then you took care of business?"
"Yes."
"By defeating and beheading the woman in question?"
"Yes. A single chop to the neck with a sharp flint axe."
"Dear God in heaven, you're all mentally ill…" Carol Ann whispered, rubbing her face that had grown increasingly numb while the queen had spoken of the bloody ways of the Mu-Kwanda.
"Carol Ann, let me explain how the challenges work… it may make you view them differently. I've been queen for five years and have survived five challenges. When a warrior, or commoner for that matter, gets a notion that she wants to attempt a shot at the title, our laws and traditions demand she makes her quest known to the public. Under the guiding light of the first full moon after the announcement, the queen and the challenger meet in the central square. They fight until one of them is no longer. The woman standing is the queen."
"Barbaric… simply barbaric."
"Well, no," Lexa said and arched a black eyebrow in a disapproving fashion. "It's all quite regulated. Here's the trick, the next challenge can only be issued after twelve moons… a full year. Otherwise, it would be anarchy and we would-"
"And it isn't now?"
"Oh no. It's meticulously planned according to the ancient traditions," Lexa said and leaned back like they had just discussed their favorite cookie recipes. "The defeated challenger is beheaded. Her body is burned on the large bonfire you probably saw in the square. Her head undergoes a certain process that I'm afraid I don't know much about… when it's been shrunken, it's nailed to the wall of the palace to remind the others about that challenger's failure."
"But the bonfire is burning now… are you expecting a challenge?"
"Oh, it's already been made public. By the next full moon, I'll be fighting a warrior woman who-"
"How… how… how can you be so casual about it?!" Carol Ann cried, nearly falling off the edge of the bench. "Don't you understand your head will be on that wall one day? And if I'm still here, what will happen to me if you lose? Will I get beheaded too and end up nailed to the wall next to you? No! Thank! You!"
"Oh, I know that someone strong enough to defeat me will appear eventually. Beyond my present challenger, I'm already keeping a close eye on a few of the warriors. One or two look like they could be mulling over plans of some kind if this challenge fails. Once they work out which of them has the best shot at me, or at the future queen, they may make their intentions known to the public. And then the wheel of fortune will be spinning."
"This is grotesque… simply grotesque!" Carol Ann croaked, staring at the unaffected queen. "Why risk everything, Queen Lexa? Why not say, I've had five good years… I'll abdicate…? Why not say-"
"Abdicate? Queens can't abdicate. Besides, if I ran away and let someone else have the throne without a fight, I'd have my throat slit in my sleep within two or three nights… like you suggested before. The Mu-Kwanda don't look too kindly upon cowards."
Carol Ann shook her head slowly. She let her eyes glide up the impressive physical presence of the queen from the endless, bare legs, past the admittedly powerful torso and arms, and up to her face with the mesmerizing pale-blue eyes. There was no doubt in her mind that Lexa could defeat just about any opponent, but in matters of life and death, there was always a bigger threat waiting just around the corner. Even Lexa wouldn't be able to defeat the house-sized warrior if she was one of the challengers, nor would she be able to protect herself against conspiracies like the one she mentioned she had exposed in the past. "Lexa… may I speak my mind?"
"Oh, I don't know. Are you going to curse or insult me in blasphemous ways? That's a capital offence," Lexa said with a wicked gleam in her eye.
"Why don't you say that enough is enough and come back to the real world with me? The boat I came on is still moored off the coast… I hope… and we might even have a means to get out there. Charles and I sailed into the small lagoon in a yacht tender. Let these primitive savages fight their own battles… let them live in their constant state of bloodlust and reciprocal murdering. Fifteen years, Alexandra… so much has happened in those fifteen years. The world's a different place now."
Lexa leaned forward on the bench and put her elbows on her bare thighs. Sighing, she shot Carol Ann a darker look than usual. "I've thought about it. But I can't. It's too late for me. I've been damaged by my stay here. I told you that I've killed… I didn't tell you that I've become so good at it that taking a life gives me a thrill. Can you imagine someone like that returning to the real world? No. That book has closed for me."
The queen got up and moved up to the throne. At the bench, Carol Ann scrunched up her face in a mask of horror and disgust. An entire army of ants crawled up and down her skin upon hearing Lexa's final comment. She hadn't expected to hear that, and yet, she had. The darkness often found at the edge of insanity had been lurking behind the pale-blue eyes from the start of the conversation. "So be it," she said and moved away from the bench as well. "But don't expect me to stay here on this wretched island. I have no intention of ending my days as a trophy nailed to someone's wall."
"Let's see about that," Lexa mumbled while she fluffed out her loincloth. Looking up at her guest, she smiled and waved the blonde woman closer to her. "Please, Carol Ann… let's change the subject. I can see how much it pains you to talk about such matters. Let it rest for now. Tell me what's been going on in the world lately."
Carol Ann sighed and shuffled up to stand in front of the throne. Fatigue washed over her and the world suddenly felt far too heavy on her narrow shoulders. "Queen Lexa, please… I'm so tired. It's been a long, hellish day for me. I promise I'll tell you everything you wish to know tomorrow. Couldn't I perhaps borrow a bunk or whatever you use to sleep on? I noticed there was a bed chamber upstairs when I cleaned up."
"Ah, but that's my bed chamber," Lexa said with a wink. "I wouldn't object to sharing my bunk with you, but I'm thinking it's a little early for that? After all, we've only known each other for less than an hour." The flirtatious comment was followed by a sly, lopsided grin and another wink from the baby blues that didn't leave much to the imagination.
"Queen Lexa! I'm a married woman!" Carol Ann said with a blush exploding onto her cheeks. "And… and… and… and I'm not… like that. I… I mean, mayb- oh, God, I th- think that m- maybe I am like that, but… oh… I d- don't w- uh… want j- just a casual fling," she continued in a mumble.
Lexa laughed and waved her hand in dismissal. "Oh, that came out well. Are you trying to convince me, or yourself? Let's decide later. You were about to tell me the latest news?"
Sighing, Carol Ann realized there was no way out - at least it would give her blushing cheeks a rest. Since she might as well get it over with so she could get some sleep, she sat down on the woven carpet and made herself comfortable. "Oh Goodness me, where do I start?" she said and began to rack her mind for all the events leading up to World War II and everything that had happened with the Cold War since. "Well… the world has been at war. We've had a new world war, in fact. Millions died in Europe and here in the Pacific. Most countries on most continents fought the Axis powers… Germany, Italy and Japan. That raged from 1939 to 1945 when the Axis was finally defeated. The battles here in the Pacific were brutal like few others. Japan was finally brought to its knees when the US Air Force dropped something called the atom bomb… a single bomb that killed hundreds of thousands of people."
"And you call us savages when we kill one jailer?" Lexa said, leaning forward on the throne. Although the comment had been delivered in a deadpan, a small gleam of humor flashed across her eyes.
"Uh, point taken. But from what we've been told, it was necessary to drop the atom bomb. Like I said, many sea and air battles were fought here in the Pacific. The United States was forced into it when the Japanese navy attacked a base on Hawaii, so I suppose the President and the Generals felt we needed to take it back to Japan to finish it. Lexa, just curious… did you see any airplanes or perhaps navy vessels during the war?"
"Eight, ten years ago? To be honest, I can't recall seeing any. We hardly ever see any ships, and certainly not planes. We're too far away from everything."
"Oh, but there's something called the aircraft carrier these days… giant, flat-topped ships that are sailing runways for airplanes."
The blank look on Lexa's face proved she had no idea of, and no interest in aircraft carriers. Carol Ann cleared her throat and went back to the narrative. "Uh… I moved to the United States in 1947 after I had married my husband Charles Lawrence. He was a fighter pilot in the European theater. I lost my parents when I was twelve when the Germans bombed London in 1940… what we called the Blitz… and I moved to my maternal grandparents near Stoke-on-Trent. I met Charles in 1944 and the dashing Air Force Captain swept me away on the wings of love."
"I'm sorry to hear about your parents. That must have been traumatic."
"It was. Thank you. But I lived a good life with my grandparents so… it all evened out in the end. I still miss my parents. My mother was so kind and beautiful."
"She must have been considering how beautiful you are," Lexa said, shooting Carol Ann an intense, pale-blue gaze.
Carol Ann's blush returned with a vengeance. The corners of her mouth twitched in what was supposed to have been a smile, but she was too flustered to carry it through. "Goodness me… thank you. Oh…" She cleared her throat to get back on track. "Well… in… after the war… President Roosevelt died in 1944, so Harry Truman became the President of the United States. In the election late last year, he was followed by a war hero, Dwight D. Eisenhower. He'll be there for a good number of years, I think… he's very popular. I met him at a fundraiser during his campaign. My husband Charles shook hands with him, but I didn't. He's shorter and less imposing than you'd think a President would be, actually…"
Lexa let out a merry chuckle. "To me, most men are short. It always makes me laugh when I see how annoyed the natives in the other camp become when they have to look up to a woman."
"Yeah… not something I've ever experienced," Carol Ann mumbled. "Anyway, after World War II, it didn't take long for something called the Cold War to come into play. That's most of the free world against the Soviets. The communists. Now, we both have so many atom bombs we can destroy the entire planet fifty times over and still have a few missiles left."
"Again… and you call us savages?"
Carol Ann chuckled and reached down to toy with the woven palm leaves. "I'm not making a very good case for the so-called civilized world, am I?"
"No."
The two women chuckled before they fell into a pregnant silence. Carol Ann's face cracked open in a wide yawn that she covered in a hurry. "Queen Lexa, I don't want to appear rude, but I really need to get some sleep now."
"That can be arranged," Lexa said and got up from the throne.
"But, please, not in your bunk…"
A wicked, little smile flashed across Lexa's lips. It was undoubtedly meant to instill a sense of confidence in Carol Ann, but it was too wicked for its own good, and Carol Ann furrowed her brow.
"I was merely jesting before," the queen said, putting out her hand. "Come, let's find you a suitable place to spend the night. After all, we shouldn't make the newest member of our tribe lose her beauty sleep just because the Queen wants to dish the gossip."
Carol Ann came to a halt halfway between sitting on the floor and standing up. She scrunched up her face and shot the Queen a dark look. "With all due respect, Queen Lexa… like I told you already, I have no intention of staying, much less becoming a member of your tribe. You wanted to speak with me… we've spoken. Now I need to sleep and then find my husband and the others so we can get on our merry way back home."
"But you have such a melodic voice… and you know so many things, too. You would be fantastic as my special advisor. What do you say?" Lexa said and put out her hand like she wanted to help Carol Ann get up the rest of the way. Without being asked, she grabbed hold of the blonde's hand and pulled her up in no time. "Oh, can't I persuade you to join our glorious tribe? You know you really want to. It may be hiding deep inside you, but I can tell your interest has been piqued. It's right there on your blushing cheeks. Carol Ann, it's a great life… and there are plenty of perks." - The last part was delivered in a stage whisper.
The two women stood close. Very close. So close in fact that Carol Ann's cheeks caught fire all over again. Clearing her throat, she took a half-step back so she had space to breathe without inhaling the Queen's husky natural scent that was a mixture of spices and the exotic smell that permeated the island. "Queen Lexa, you're flirting with me again. I'm flattered… truly I am. But I'm also a married woman."
"You've said that twice now. Neither time have you called yourself a happily married woman. Why is that?" Lexa said and cocked her head.
"Well… it's implicit. I love my husband."
"Are you sure?"
"I beg your pardon!" Carol Ann said and moved away for good. "I let you in on a deeply personal secret before, but I can see I shouldn't have. This isn't the time or the place to talk about my marriage!"
"Well, you started. No, tell you what," Lexa said and made a sweeping, theatrical gesture. "Now hear my royal decree! You are hereby a fully-fledged member of the Mu-Kwanda tribe! From now on, your name shall be Carola of the Mu-Kwanda. You'll wear our colors and be safe from the hunters when you travel in the jungle. No man shall ever have the right to put his mark on you without your explicit approval."
"Buh… Queen Lexa-"
The queen carried on at full speed like her guest's eyes weren't standing out on stalks at all. Laughing out loud, she turned around so fast her long, black hair swept out and cascaded over her shoulder. "You shall remain in our tribe and be taught the ways of the warrior. Or perhaps, since you're not that tall, the ways of the bureaucrat. My special advisor, Carola of the Mu-Kwanda. That has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"
"No! No, I don't!" Carol Ann said and clenched her fists.
"Irrelevant. If you do not take naturally to being a bureaucrat, you could be a birther. One of the women who has been given the divine task of providing the next generation of girls for our tribe."
"Have you lost your mind? That's the kind of life I live now!" Carol Ann cried and threw her hands in the air. "You want me to live a life as someone who spreads her legs for some half-naked, half-witted native savage who'll only think of me as a hole he can stick his thing into? I! Will! Not! As soon as this damn night is over, I'll leave this wretched camp and all you insane people behind, find my husband and go back to my boat. End of discussion!"
The jovial expression on Queen Lexa's face melted away and revealed the steel and the darkness that had been lurking behind it. Her pale-blue eyes shot fire and turned lethal. She closed the distance between herself and her guest in a hurry and reached out to grab hold of the smaller woman's shoulders. "Remember what I told you about insulting the queen? You are doing that right now. It's a capital offence to insult the queen by calling her names," she said in a steely voice that was night-and-day different to her regular velvety timbre. "Don't forget you're my guest. Guests shouldn't insult their hosts. We've killed women for less, Carol Ann. Men for far less. Retract your comment now and I'll forget it ever happened."
"I can't and I won't. You finally revealed yourself, Alexandra," Lexa said in a dead-tired voice. "You're as sick in the head as the rest of them are. There must be something on the island that turns you into this kind of… of… human monster. Maybe it's contaminated water or swamp gas or fermented fruit or the-"
"Keep talking. For each word you utter, you'll only sharpen the flint axe."
Carol Ann shook her head angrily and yanked her shoulders free of the Queen's grip. "I knew it was all an act. You and your overblown schoolgirl flirting… you don't control me! I'm not one of the blinkered fanatics you call subjects!"
"Now you are. You must follow the ancient traditions or die. It's as simple as that. You're my special advisor and-"
"Oh, spare me all your rubbish! My husband and the crew from the boat will find this camp eventually. When they do, they won't hesitate to shoot to kill to set me free. They have rifles… you do remember what firearms can do, right?"
"If men set foot in this camp, we'll kill them all," Lexa growled. "You've seen what my warriors are capable of."
"I have! Bloodthirsty murderers the lot of you! You're all insan-"
"Silence!" Lexa barked with enough venom to make Carol Ann clam up. "You are a member of the tribe. And therefore… my property." Lexa turned her head away and barked an equally loud command in the language of the natives.
The double doors flew apart and the house-sized warrior hurried inside the throne room with a puzzled expression on her face. The queen and the warrior spoke for a short while before the large woman reached for the prisoner.
Though the shock and exhaustion nearly bowled her over, Carol Ann screamed and tried to evade the warrior's strong hands. She hadn't counted on the queen grabbing hold of her and shoving her closer to the warrior's reach. Moments later, the large woman clapped a hand over Carol Ann's mouth to make her shut up.
When her screams were muffled and her head forced painfully to the side, Carol Ann finally relented and resigned herself to be carried out of the throne room in much the same way she had entered.
---
Despite the lateness of the hour, the camp wasn't devoid of activity. A few sentries patrolled the square and the pathway down to the main gates, and a caretaker shuffled around to keep an eye on the many torches burning in the clay amphoras. At the far end of the camp, several commoners had already risen and had their fireplaces and chimneys going to prepare for the coming day. A baby cried somewhere, no doubt wanting food or a change of diapers.
Many of Queen Lexa's subjects came to a halt when the large warrior came out of the richly decorated palace carrying the strange, blonde visitor over her shoulder. The house-sized woman stomped over to the nearest of the three wooden cages, waving her free arm and growling a few commands to instruct two scouts who happened to walk by to operate the winch so the bell-shaped cage could be lowered down onto the ground.
The rope holding the cage in the air went down the arm for the crane and was attached to a large wheel with a crank handle. The coil of rope on the wheel was locked by a restraining bolt that needed to be removed with care, but the two scouts were too tired from the long-range reconnaissance mission they had just completed to be bothered to do it the proper way. Instead, one of them simply kicked the bolt out of the locking position while the other looked on.
Gravity took over, and the wheel holding the coil of rope let out a wild screech as the weight it held up was suddenly released - as a result, the wheel spun out of control and the cage fell to the ground with a loud crunch. The rest of the coiled-up rope continued to unravel at speed until it reached the end stop, which sent such a jerk through the entire crane it shook and nearly toppled over.
The house-sized warrior gave the two lazy - and sheepish - scouts a large piece of her mind in the native language, and that outburst attracted even more attention. When she realized she was still carrying the prisoner, she dumped her on the ground like a sack of flour.
The impact once again knocked the wind out of Carol Ann. Panting and groaning, she sat up straight on the filthy ground and looked around with sad, exhausted eyes. Now, all three cages would be occupied. The rotten corpse in the one the furthest away didn't care, nor did the other male native in the other cage. He hadn't moved an inch since she had seen him last, which probably meant he was either under the influence of the venom from a dart, or simply dead as a door nail.
From one moment to the next, she was manhandled to her feet and shoved through the opened hatch with such force that she tripped over her own boots and ended up down on the dusty, wooden floor of the cage.
Shaped like a bell, the cage had a flat floor and thirty-six curved, bamboo-like reeds that went up to the single eye the rope was attached to. Nothing larger than a rat could slip through the narrow gaps between the thirty-six reeds, so all thought of such an escape was a nonsense.
Inside, Carol Ann clambered to her feet and grabbed hold of two of the reeds. With wide, frightened eyes, she stared out at the natives who brought her a couple of innocuous gifts. The first was a squat-pot that the house-sized warrior slammed down onto the wooden floor. The second was a bundle of black fur. Carol Ann stared at the fur like she had no idea what to do with it.
"Your new clothes," Lexa said as she strolled down the short flight of stairs and onto the central square. The two sheepish scouts who had been too lazy to lower the cage grew even more embarrassed at the presence of their queen. Both bowed deeply to show their respect.
Giving them a casual wave, Lexa continued on to the cage where she came to a stop and put her hands behind her back. "For your new life here in the tribe. Mmmm?" She turned to the scouts and instructed them to shut the door to the cage.
Once the hatch had been closed and secured with a string of woven fabric, Lexa cocked her head and shot the woman behind the bars a dark gaze. "Carol Ann, this is your final chance to reconsider. There's a soft bunk waiting for you if you embrace your new life."
Carol Ann pulled her lips back in an ugly grimace. Instead of going along with the Queen's request, she forced the bundle in between two reeds and gave it such a hard kick it flew out and onto the ground.
"Suit yourself. I'm sure a few days in there will make you see things my way," Lexa said and waved at the scouts to pull the cage back up.
The two women who had been too lazy to lower it properly were now faced with the far more strenuous task of pulling the whole thing up. Looking at each other, they let out identical groans. They started working the crank handle, but it wasn't until the large warrior came to their assistance that the cage started moving upward.
Once the cage was locked in position ten feet off the ground, Lexa took a casual step back to give the prisoner a final look. Grunting, she uttered a command to the large warrior before she turned around and strolled over to the palace.
The cage swayed back and forth like the nets Carol Ann had been carried in had done, but unlike the nets, the rope holding up the cage creaked and groaned like it was on the brink of giving up the ghost. It was difficult for her to keep her balance standing up, so she fumbled down into a sitting position and shuffled over to lean her back against the bamboo-like reeds. It upset the cage's center of gravity which sent the empty squat-pot skidding down next to her, but the added weight on one side helped it settle down sooner.
---
Carol Ann stared into the air without seeing anything. All the gruesome images, all the hard, aggressive voices, all the horrific events she had been exposed to over the course of the day were etched into her brain. Her mind churned on and on in an endless loop of everything that had been going on since she, Charles and the others set foot on the sandy beach at the other side of the island.
An odd whooshing sound made her snap out of her dark stupor. At first, the cage was too dark to see what could have produced that sound, so she thought it might have been a bird of some kind, but a moment later, a pointy, flint spearhead tore between the gaps in the reeds and stopped an inch or so in front of her face.
Shrieking, Carol Ann tried to grab hold of the spear, but the person wielding it withdrew it too quickly. A nasty cackle filled the air around the cage, and it was followed by another poke that wasn't quite as close.
She fumbled away from the reeds which sent the cage into a sideways roll - as a knock-on effect, the empty squat-pot fell over and tumbled around inside the cage. Crawling on the floor to keep her balance, she tried to peek over the edge and caught a glimpse of the warrior whose toes she had crushed with the heel of her boot. "Oh God, no… it's that crazy bitch again… they're all insane… you're all insane! You hear me? You're insane!" she cried, ducking away when the spear was thrust up into the cage once more.
Down below, Q'uola cackled as she hobbled around to find a better angle of attack. Jabbing, poking and thrusting the long spear through the gaps and into the cage, she laughed out loud at Carol Ann's frantic cries and panicky sobs. Once, but only once, she smacked the flat of the blade against Carol Ann's arm to show that it was all in jest, but that she could kill her in a second if she wanted to.
The fun and games came to an end when Queen Lexa stepped out onto her porch wrapped in a sleeping fur and little else. She uttered a short command to Q'uola who nodded and withdrew the spear for good.
As her parting shot, Q'uola grabbed hold of the cage's floor with both hands and began to wobble it around. Cackling, the warrior shook it so violently that Carol Ann thumped against the reeds and the floor as she was thrown around inside. Once the aggressive Q'uola had had her revenge for the embarrassing sneak-attack on her foot, she hobbled away into the night leaving the cage swinging wildly back and forth.
Carol Ann cried out her terror and discomfort as her little world tilted and spun like a ship caught in a rough storm. Finally reaching the bamboo-like reeds, she hung on with all her might until the cage settled down after what seemed like fifty wild, nauseating swings. There was nothing she could do to rectify the awful mess she found herself in, so she buried her face deep in her arms and focused on getting her heart rate back to normal. A few tears escaped her eyes, but she didn't care. There wasn't any point in wiping them away. She was as good as dead in that cage.
*
*
CHAPTER 8 - EPILOGUE
Carol Ann awoke from a fitful slumber in the same position she had fallen asleep in: curled up into a fetal position in the center of the hanging cage. The black circles under her eyes and the waxen hue of her skin proved she was dead-tired mentally and physically, but the unknown fate that loomed over her head added too much pressure to surrender fully to the reinvigorating sleep.
Sighing, she shuffled around in the cage which made it creak and gently rock from side to side. Dawn was slow in coming although the sky in the east had gained a paler streak near the horizon since the last time she had looked. The level of light had gone up from pitch black to simply dark, so it couldn't be long before the sun would rise and scorch everything in the path of its rays.
Some of the torches lining the square had gone out, and the reason became clear when she caught a glimpse of the caretaker fast asleep against the outside of one of the barracks.
Carol Ann's chin started quivering. She didn't want to give the savage natives the satisfaction of seeing her weeping, so she tried to rub it to make the tears go away. It didn't work this time, and a few escaped her eyes and drew wet lines down her cheeks. Putting her hands behind her head, she took several trembling breaths to get everything under control before the floodgates would burst and she would lose it completely.
Her mind didn't allow her rest but kept churning on at high speed. Standing out among all the horrible things she had experienced on the island, the surprising, and chilling, conversations she'd had with the Queen were at the forefront of her mind. Being complex and multi-faceted was one thing; being stark-raving bonkers was another, and she had no doubt the admittedly beautiful Lexa fit into the latter category.
"I can understand why the natives are so crazy," Carol Ann mumbled, glancing around to see if anyone observed her speaking to herself. "The island is far too small to hold… uh… uh… procreation orgies. They must be horribly in-bred after all these years. They're probably all related somehow. But Lexa? Has she always been this insane? She's certifiable. Maybe the cause really is contaminated water… or… or… God, could it be so simple? Maybe she's still just an insecure seventeen-year old underneath the suave, adult exterior. She's had to live without moral guidance during the most important years for a young girl. She learned all her life lessons from the twisted natives… all her social skills. Goodness me, that could be it… that show she put on in there… flirting like a two-bit gigolo. I've never been so embarrassed in my life! Although I did feel attracted, I must admit that… I wasn't immune to it. Oh God, if Charles ever finds out about me, he'll file for divorce faster than I can call my lawyer."
Looking around, Carol Ann suddenly realized she wasn't just speaking to herself, she was holding a grand recital. She clammed up at once before she could put herself into the 'stark-raving bonkers' category. Her cheeks reddened and she ducked her head down between her shoulders.
---
Moving her legs up, she rested her head on her knees and shot a dark look at the richly decorated, two-storey building where Queen Lexa was presumably sleeping in her bed chamber on the second floor. The light had increased so much she was able to see the five shrunken heads that had been nailed to the wall.
Shuddering, she was about to look away when she noticed the woven fabric holding the hatch in place had worked itself loose - probably as a direct result of the violent shaking and rolling Q'uola had put the cage through in her episode of red-mist vengeance. With nothing to keep the hatch itself inside the frame, it had jumped the lock and was ready to be opened without using more brute force than what a pinkie could provide.
Her breath hitched and her heart rate went through the roof. She stared wide-eyed at the small crack that appeared around the hatch. It wasn't secured, there was no doubt about that. Forcing herself to breathe normally though little black spots had invaded her vision from the potential of getting free, she glanced around the square to check if anyone was watching her.
She was safe; although she did see movement in the semi-darkness, nobody paid any attention to her. All she needed to do was to open the hatch, jump the ten feet down onto the ground without twisting or breaking an ankle, and run away toward the main gate - and hope the sentries had fallen asleep. Furrowing her brow, she rubbed her numb face furiously. A lot of things needed to come together for her plan to succeed, but she had to try it.
Inch by inch, she crept closer to the hatch. If she moved too fast or too far in one go, the cage would start swinging around all over again which would alert everyone around her that she was up to something, and thus ruin all her plans.
Getting closer to the wooden frame, she tried to remember if it creaked when it was opened, but she hadn't had time to notice things like that at the point of her incarceration. Her fingers had almost reached the hatch when someone yawned nearby. The fingers and everything else froze in place, and her eyes grew ever wider.
She whipped her head around to find the culprit, but success didn't come until she could see the fuzzy outline of a black fur blanket that had been wrapped around a sentry of some kind. The person was leaning against the porch at the palace which was still concealed by the shadows, but it wasn't the queen - the woman was too short to be Lexa.
"Dear God in heaven, I was so close," Carol Ann mumbled in a trembling whisper. The raw disappointment manifested itself as a hard knot in her stomach that sent a wave of pain up through her system. She sighed deeply which turned into a sob. Before she could get angry with herself for sobbing, she noticed the sentry left the porch behind and came over to check up on her.
"She heard the sob," she whispered, glancing down at the ground. "All right… all right, I can use that to my advantage. Here goes." Using the pain she already felt, she let out an impressive though fake groan that did indeed attract the attention of the sentry. Another groan followed, then another. Throughout the performance, she had buried her face in her hands, but she had done so at the edge of the cage so she could keep an eye on how the sentry responded.
So far, everything was going to plan. It went even better with the next heartfelt moan that made the sentry shuffle over to the crank handle to see if she could lower the cage on her own. When she discovered she couldn't, she shuffled away from the cages, across the central square and into the shadows next to the palace.
Carol Ann groaned long and hard over yet another failed plan, but the groan aided her cause as the sentry came back twenty or so seconds later with that most indispensable of tools around military barracks, tall fences and two-storey buildings - a ladder.
When the ladder was put against the cage's edge on the side where the hatch was, Carol Ann let out another pained cry that she was hopeful was sufficient to convince most sane people that the person held prisoner in the cage was in some kind of medical trouble.
The sentry appeared to be one of them as she stepped up on the lower rung and began to climb the ladder. It soon became clear that she hadn't thought it through when the entire cage began to lean precariously to the side the further up she came, but by then, she was past the point of no return.
In the mean time, Carol Ann had grabbed the only weapon she had. The clay squat-pot was empty though she'd had plenty of the tasty fruit juice; she did need to go, but she just couldn't get herself to do it ten feet up in the air in a cage that was unstable at the best of times.
The sentry came closer and opened the hatch without giving any thought to the missing fabric that should have secured the lock. Grunting from trying to hold her balance, she stuck her reddish-brown head inside the cage to check up on the prisoner who just might have become a patient instead. She shouldn't have.
Carol Ann held onto the squat-pot like she had been throwing up. If it was going to be an effective weapon, the native needed to come further into the cage, or else she'd fall down onto the ground and create enough of a racket to alert other sentries. Things went a little too slow for Carol Ann's liking, so to help speed up the process, she scrunched up her face into a mask of acute pain and suffering.
The trick worked and the native climbed all the way up and entered the cage. At once, the wooden contraption started wobbling back and forth like a fair-sized earthquake was taking place right underneath it.
It became difficult for the two women to keep their balance. The native let out a few growled barbs that painted a pretty good picture of what she thought of sick, fair-skinned prisoners with blond hair.
Carol Ann hadn't thought of how badly the cage would wobble and nearly lost her footing in the heavy sea, but she was too far along in her plans to give up now. When the native knelt down and moved close enough, she swung the squat-pot and smashed it down onto the other woman's head.
The clay jar broke in half a dozen pieces that clinged and clanged to the floor in a sound reminiscent of an industrial accident at a porcelain factory. The native's eyes rolled back in her head and she thumped face-down onto the filthy wooden boards. The hard knock really sent the cage swinging, and her larger body began to slip back out of the hatch.
Groaning under her breath at the apparent success and imminent failure of her plan, Carol Ann grabbed hold of the sentry's black fur in an almighty hurry. The angle was all wrong, but she pulled with all her might and managed to drag the unresponsive warrior back from the hatch - which wasn't easy considering gravity didn't work in the same way as normal in the cage. When she pulled one way, the cage wobbled the other way; if she pulled in another direction, the cage would wobble that way, or begin to spin around. It was all rather conspicuous and she was certain she was already being watched by half a dozen warriors with blowguns.
She couldn't stop the ladder from falling onto the ground with a bump, but she managed to stop the native woman from following it down there through a sheer superhuman effort. Fatigue and plain exhaustion washed over her after she had dragged the heavy and unresponsive woman further into the cage, and she slipped down onto her knees while she tried to catch her breath. With the last of her strength, she rolled the native over onto her back which created another uncontrollable wobble.
Blood trickled down the sentry's forehead, but she had a pulse so she was still alive. Stuck into a sheath on her belt, a flint knife with a sharp blade and a wooden handle reflected the faint light. Carol Ann grabbed it by the handle and pulled it out. She stared at the lethal weapon and then down at the woman she had captured. "Lexa and the other sick individuals would have slit her throat by now to keep her silent… but if I do that, I'll become a murderer too. No. I won't stoop to their level," she whispered, using the knife to cut off the native's belt instead - such an accessory would come in handy during her escape through the ferocious jungle. She tied it around her stomach at once so she wouldn't drop it, and stuck the flint knife down into the sheath.
The black fur became loose when the belt was released, so she slipped the garment off the native's shoulder and wrapped it around herself to cover for her less-than native clothing and fair skin. Rubbing her face, she leaned back to assess the situation: she had taken care of her opponent, the hatch was still open, and she was dressed for stealth. If she could jump down onto the ground without knocking herself silly, everything would be hunky-dory.
She moved over to the hatch and held onto the bamboo-like reeds with both hands. The cage started swinging and swaying again since the weight was all on that side of it, but it would actually aid her because it meant the hatch was closer to the ground.
Outside, the level of light had improved enough to see details she hadn't been able to obtain when they had brought her there during the night. With the eastern sky slowly turning purple and orange, she was surprised to see the camp was situated only a few hundred meters back from a jagged line of rocky cliffs. Between the perimeter fence and the coastline, a stretch of jungle worked as camouflage to obscure the view of the facility from the sea - it also prevented her from making an estimate on how far above the sea level they were.
Even without that information, she could see the camp was at a higher altitude than she had expected. The mountainous cone seemed less imposing here, not to mention far closer than she had anticipated. At once, she knew where she was going if she could break free and escape the camp - she had to go up to come down.
If she could get high enough, she would be able to look beyond the jungle and find the sandy beach they arrived at. Then, she could head straight down there instead of roaming through the jungle at random in the hope of finding the right trail, like Charles had done before the really bad things started happening. "If I'm lucky, I'll run into Charles on my way there," she mumbled to herself in a quiet whisper. "If I'm unlucky, they'll have thought I was dead and sailed for home without me… no. No, I can't think like that. No, I'll find Charles, Spyros and the others and head for home aboard the Empress . Yes. In a years' time, this will be something we'll laugh at over the Sunday roast. Yes."
Gulping down her terrors, she moved over to the edge of the cage and looked around. She was still in the clear so she put a leg out of the hole and held her breath. The second leg followed in a small jump - then she fell the ten feet down and landed on the ground with a hard thump that kicked up the dust.
She bent her legs to cushion the impact, but despite her best efforts at waving her arms in the air to maintain her balance, she fell down on her rear end as gravity took over. Quickly jumping to her feet, she grabbed the fallen ladder so it wouldn't be lying around in plain sight, stuck it under her arm, and sprinted over to the nearest shadows to catch her breath.
---
The situation was far too stressful for a laid-back approach, so she clenched her ice cold fists and whipped her head around to stare in every which way she could to see if she was being watched. The native up in the cage hadn't moved since her involuntary, headbutting rendezvous with the squat-pot, so there was no need to worry about her sounding the alarm. Others in the camp didn't seem to have noticed the brief struggle or the aftermath. Everything was quiet and peaceful - just what she needed.
Hunching over, Carol Ann moved back onto the square and set off for the main gate. She needed to go past the two-storey palace to get there, but she resisted the urge to run like the wind. Instead, she went forward in a fast walk and hoped she would look like someone who was heading back from - or going into - a risqué adventure.
She looked around constantly without appearing to be doing so. On her way down the pathway toward the main gate, she didn't encounter anyone, but she eyed four sentries up ahead that could send her daring escape into an early grave. Two of them were up in a watch tower at the nearest corner of the perimeter fence, and two others were guarding the gate down on the ground.
Carol Ann suddenly came to a halt and spun around. She had felt someone's eyes on her, and it created a cold shower that trickled down her back. The eyes had been trying to burn a hole in the back of her head, but when she gave everything a close look, there was no activity to report anywhere - except the faintest of movements on the shadowy porch at the palace. She stared at it for a few seconds in case it would be a potential problem, but nothing happened.
There was no reason to tempt fate, so she hunched over and continued into the growing light. It was out of the question - not to mention suicidal - to exit through the main gate since the sentries would spot her fair skin at once, so she made a ninety-degree turn and ran parallel to the fifteen-feet tall fence for fifty yards or so until she arrived at a cluster of trees.
The thick branches had forced two of the fence's boards apart which left plenty of room for a woman her size to slip through. After looking around again to check if she was being watched, she jumped into the cluster of trees and inched closer to the gap in the boards. The black fur she still wore wrapped around her shoulders got stuck on twigs and picked off several leaves, but it was nothing she couldn't handle.
When she confirmed the gap was big enough for her, she let out a sigh of relief and shook her head at the insanity of it all. She moved closer still but didn't dare stick her head or leg through the gap without checking the condition of the other side first. The natives were sick enough to install death traps to prevent the males from breaking in, but whether or not they had ever considered that someone would use that path to break out was another question entirely.
Crouching at the wooden boards, she gulped down a worried lump before she stuck her hand through the gap. Nothing happened; she didn't feel anything out of the ordinary. No cobwebs, no second fence, no coated spikes, no carnivorous plants waiting to eat her - nor could she hear alarm bells, warning calls or anything of the sort. In short, there were no traps.
One strange sound did in fact reach her ears, and she drew in a sharp breath and held it as she spun around. The sound of clattering teeth returned when she couldn't hold her breath any longer. She groaned long and hard when she realized it had been herself.
"All right, that does it," she mumbled and stuck her left leg through the gap. Bending down, she curled herself up to fit through; it wasn't even a tight fit as she was able to clear the wooden boards without having her bulky black fur get stuck on anything.
The shrubbery on the other side was denser than it had appeared, but she wrapped the fur over her head and went through at full steam. Black tufts of fur were torn out here and there, and she pulled twigs clean off the bushes, but her skin was never nicked.
She knelt down in the shrubbery to get a better look at the camp's exterior and the landscape surrounding it. In the increasing daylight, she could see that her assumption of the area being cleared to stop an advancing enemy from using the trees as cover had been correct - all that remained for a distance of three hundred yards or more towards the dark, bluish-green edge of the jungle were scores of tree stumps.
"God, can I make it?" she whispered in a trembling voice. Glancing to her left, she peeked up at the nearest watch tower where the two sentries were still at their post. At the moment, they were looking in another direction. The other sentries who guarded the gate were on the other side of the perimeter fence and couldn't see her any longer. "I have to at least try," she mumbled and took off in a hunched-over sprint.
The first tree stump beckoned, and she fell down behind it and pulled the black fur over her head to make it appear she was one of the bear-like creatures. Nothing happened at the camp, so she jumped up and raced towards the second stump.
The pattern continued for the next three hundred yards until she had reached the edge of the jungle itself. A family of black-and-yellow spiders sharing a huge cobweb gave her an enthusiastic, creepy-crawly welcome, but she took the long way around it. Once she had reached the familiar palm trees, she dove behind a trunk to catch her breath.
Leaning against the palm, she wiped the cold sweat off her brow with the back of a hand. "Made it…" she whispered, looking into the inhospitable, perhaps even hostile, jungle beyond her position. The mountainous cone loomed large not that far from her position, but she knew it was an optical illusion. In reality, it was a short mile away.
"Now all I have to do is to find some water and some nourishment… and evade the insects and the predators. And get up that mountain. And find Charles and the Empress . Easy-peasy… oh, God, who am I kidding?! What am I doing here? I'm going to die a hundred times over if I'm not careful!"
A strong wave of fatigue made her close her eyes and lean her head back against the palm tree. It would be so easy just to get some rest there before carrying on, but she knew it was far too close to the camp. It wouldn't take the experienced warrior women ten minutes to find her there. Sighing, she rubbed her face and pushed herself away from the palm.
To feel a little better protected, she pulled the flint knife out of the sheath and held it ready. A billion critters big and small awaited her in the jungle, but she had no option. Her only way out was through. As a special little gift, nature decided to give her a taste of what she was about to face by having several monkey calls echo among the trees. It was the dawn of a new day, in more ways than one.
After taking one last look at the camp she had just left behind, Carol Ann Lawrence gulped down her anxiousness and set off on the next part of her frightening adventure in the deep, dark jungle of Ka'una-Kameha. It would be a hazardous journey, but for the first time since setting foot on the sandy beach, she would be in command of her own destiny…
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THE END of BOOK 1… to be concluded in book 2.
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THE END.