Outlaw (7 page)

Lela suddenly hopped up onto the stone table, stood to my height, and pulled open my lips. She showed them my teeth and spoke in excited terms. She turned and beamed at me.

“I tell them you are very healthy, miss. You have made baby and are still young and strong. You must speak only of making this baby.”

I resigned myself then to the mere task of survival.

“It’s true,” I said. “I am very healthy and can make many babies.”

Kirutu, prince of the Warik tribe, stepped forward, spoke three words, “
Ti an umandek
,” and set two clamshells on the stone.

Lela hopped down, grinning wide. “This lord will take you. You will be saved.”

The idea terrified me. “I don’t want this lord!”

Lela’s smile vanished, replaced by a genuinely frightened look. “No, miss, you must not say this! It is great insult.”

Seeing Kirutu’s glare, I knew he could not have misunderstood my tone. His eyes darkened.

But I saw something else in his face. Pain. He was wounded. This prince wasn’t accustomed to being turned down. He likely couldn’t understand why anyone, particularly one as lowly as me, the white wam, would object to the prospect of marrying him. It should be the pinnacle of my existence, a great honor.

Again reason came to my aide. I cast my gaze into the fire. “Tell Kirutu, the great prince of Tulim, that I am overwhelmed with gratitude at his choosing,” I said.

Lela quickly told him and listened to his response.

“He says you will suffer most painful death if you lie to this lord.”

“Tell him I have not lied.”

She did and gave his response, once again smiling. “You will bear him many strong children.”

The thought of allowing Kirutu to touch me was deeply repulsive, but I managed to hold the feeling back, thinking that I would agree then and make myself revolting to him later.

“Yes.”

The prince Kirutu addressed the others and nodded at the two shells. The clans discussed his offer for a minute, then nodded in agreement, all but Wilam, son of the Impirum chief, who didn’t seem interested in the talk of payment.

“This is very good price, miss,” Lela informed me.

“He’s paying two shells for me?”

“This is this trade. They must pay the chief.”

I caught the eye of the prince called Wilam, who studied me with a curious expression that made me wonder what he was thinking.

He spoke without taking his eyes from me, then turned to Kirutu and exchanged several words with the man. I wondered if he was making a bid for me as well.

As one they turned to me. Wilam nodded at Lela. “
Yoru
.”

“This Wilam says you are making them fools,” Lela said. “He says you lie to this lords. That you don’t want to be with this prince. This is insult. The prince will not force any woman.”

Wilam had exposed me, and I felt as though I had no choice but to offer my honesty. “What does he expect from me? To want this? I was taken from the sea by force. I’ve been bound for three days in a canoe, like a pig. They’ve thrown me in a hole and hurt me and they expect me to be thankful!”

“This is very dangerous to say, miss,” Lela whispered.

“It’s the truth.”

“I think this lord Wilam does not want the other to have you. Maybe he not like you making this babies with Kirutu. It gives Kirutu power.”

“Then tell Wilam to take me.”

“No, it cannot be. All must agree.”

For the first time the shaman with the mask asked a question, to which Wilam responded. The exchange between them came to an end. Without further delay, each one of the three tribal leaders spoke the same verdict.

“
Kamburak
.”

Nothing about these people met my expectations of the word
savage
. Their ways were not characterized by boiling pots and chanting. This was a calculated affair driven by complexities and cunning. I was only a pawn to be taken or sacrificed in some chess match far beyond my understanding.

Kirutu picked up the shells he’d offered and stepped back. Only then did I see the horrified expression on Lela’s face.

She looked up at me, stricken. “This prince Wilam say you cannot live.”

I felt my heart stutter.

“They say you must die tomorrow.”

THERE in the jungle, I understood fully what it meant to be worthless.

In America good health was a basic human right, and if the family could not bear the cost of extending life, the state would step in to spend millions of dollars on the infirm, all with the hope of adding a day, a week, a month, or a year to a person’s life.

And yet in the Tulim valley I was purchased for two clamshells, then rejected and sentenced to death so that one man wouldn’t gain an advantage over another.

The council dispersed and two warriors pulled me away from the table. My struggling only made things worse. They gagged and bound me and carried me down the mountain without fear that I would cause them any more trouble. Once again I was only a pig on a pole.

An hour later I was back in the hole.

Only then, after the slapping feet of my carriers had faded, did my mind settle enough to form coherent thoughts.

I hadn’t been kidnapped by savages as I’d first assumed. Instead, I had been collected by highly skilled hunters and traders. In their world none of my rights had been violated, because I was wam and therefore had no rights.

Tomorrow I would die.

I lay on the damp earth, breathing into the bag they’d left me in, and slowly drifted into oblivion, wholly defeated.

A soft thump prodded my tired mind. But only a few hours had passed and so I was sure I’d imagined it. They hadn’t come for me yet. Tomorrow was still a long way off.

My eyes snapped wide when I felt hands tearing at my bonds. I was instantly awake. It was morning already?

Someone was over me, breathing hard, freeing the knots that bound my hands and feet. The bag was unceremoniously pulled off my head and I turned in time to see the bare outline of someone vanishing over the hole’s rim. And then they were gone, leaving me in the earth, my heart pounding like a drum.

They would come back?

But they didn’t come back, and after a several minutes I dared to think the impossible: someone had freed me! Who or why I had no basis of understanding, but their actions had been deliberate and they had not returned to collect me.

I saw something else. My blouse, my capris, and my shoes lay beside me in a heap. Everything but my bra. They had known I would need some covering to survive an attempt at escape? My feet needed protection from the jungle floor, and my skin a barrier from sharp branches and leeches.

I ripped off the gag wound about my head. Trembling like a twig I scrambled to my feet, frantically pulled on my pants and blouse, and made an attempt to pull on my shoes. But I staggered off balance and decided they could wait. I had to escape before anyone else came. So I flung the shoes out of the hole and climbed up after them.

The structure’s layout slowly emerged by moonlight seeping through an opening roughly thirty paces to my right. I was in a long thatched house with a dirt floor, a prison for slaves or enemies, I guessed.

I ran two steps, made a hasty retreat to collect my shoes, then turned and sprinted toward that faint light, desperate to be free.

“Ta temeh?”

The hoarse voice swirled around me. They were coming! I had to get out! Never mind that I had not the slightest notion of where to go. Never mind that they would only discover my escape and fetch me as if I were but a pet turtle who’d crawled under the table. I only wanted out.

“Ta temeh?”

I was halfway to the opening before it occurred to me that I recognized the gruff voice. It came from the other prisoner. The one who’d spoken English. In my gagged haze, without the means to call out, I’d forgotten about him.

“Hello?” My speech sounded hollow, suppressed by hard breathing.

His call came back, just ahead and to my right. “Hello?”

I hurried to what I now saw as a cell of sorts, made of timbers set in a framework of poles. Twine was knotted around a piece of wood that kept a rough-hewn door shut.

Breathless, I spoke again, in the thinnest voice. “Hello?”

“Who is it?” Even through his whisper I could hear that his accent was American, though not Southern.

“Julian,” I managed.

The steady song of cicadas came through the opening ahead. Nothing more.

“Hello?”

“You’re an American?” he finally asked.

“I’m from Atlanta,” I replied.

The moment still stands in my mind as utterly surreal. There in the deepest unknown jungle I had indeed stumbled upon an American, like myself, and I was so overwhelmed that I could not yet think to set him free.

“Who…who are you?” I asked.

“I’m Michael,” he said. “Can you open the door?”

Dropping my shoes, I tugged at the knot with fervor, managed to unwind the twine, and yanked open the door.

There stood a man taller than my five feet and four inches, looking half my width, and I was a small woman. His hair was thin and receded, tangled and sticking out in every direction. A dark beard hung low enough to make me wonder if he’d shaved in the last year.

His nose and cheekbones protruded from a gaunt face covered in days of well-worn dirt. He was dressed in tattered slacks and a filthy shirt that might have blown away in a strong wind.

He stared at me with eyes that looked too large for their sockets and tentatively offered me a thin hand coated in dried mud. “I’m Michael.”

“We have to go!” I said. I knew that I wasn’t reasoning properly, but I was so eager to be out of that clammy place that I made no attempt to slow myself down. “They’re coming! Hurry.”

“You’ve finally come?” he said. “You’re her?”

“Who? No. My boat was wrecked. They found me and forced me here.”

“You’re an American?”

His eyes twitched in their sockets and I could see that his mind wasn’t fully coherent. But the fact that we were both alive and together buoyed my courage and I tugged at his arm.

“We have to get out.”

“Where are we going?”

“Out! We have to get back to the coast.”

“The coast?” His eyes darted to the opening on his right. “No, we can’t. That’s not the way it goes.”

“The way what goes? We have to! I’ve been sentenced to death.”

“Sentenced?” He lifted his crusty hand and ran his fingers through his hair. It was clear to me that his captivity had affected his mind in a profound way.

“This may be our only chance, we have to try,” I said.

But he didn’t come. “You don’t understand…” He stared at me, eyes searching mine, as if lost in a trance.

For a moment I felt as if I were disconnected from my own body, watching insanity unfold beneath me. I had no context for what was happening to me. I was lost between worlds.

But then the moment passed. I wasn’t lost at all—I could see, hear, smell, and feel that much with every cell of my body. I was trapped. A slave against my will, suffering through a horrible tragedy that would surely end in my death.

As was Michael.

Even in my own frenzied state I could see that such a fragile man could be as much of a liability as an asset in any escape. But I also knew that any journey through crocodile-infested swamps would be impossible without help. There was no telling what this man might have learned during his time among the Tulim. He spoke their language, didn’t he?

“How long have you been here?” I asked quickly.

“What date is it?”

“August. Nineteen sixty-three.”

He stared at me. “They only put me in the hole when they think I’ll be a problem.”

“You’ve been free here?”

“No. Yes. Not without a guard. But…” He kept looking at the moonlit opening and now whispered what seemed to be a great secret to him. “I don’t think I can leave the valley.”

“Why not?”

He tugged at my arm and struck out toward the opening, suddenly and fully alive.

“Hurry!”

I hurried after him as he quickly hobbled toward the exit.

The sounds of the night exploded in my ears as we rushed from the structure they’d imprisoned us in. Tall trees, many meters high, blotted out the stars above and blocked any view of the houses in the main village I knew to be near.

“This way! This way!” Michael ran in a half crouch, back hunched, straight up a jungle path that quickly ascended a hill. I followed on his heels, not daring to say a word. He seemed to know where he was going and I was so relieved to be free of the hole that I didn’t think about what lay ahead.

It took us ten minutes to reach the knob of a barren hill that rose above the surrounding canopy. Michael doubled over, hacking, hands on knees.

I was more worried about pursuit than my lungs. He saw me searching the jungle behind us and waved it off.

“We’re good.”
Pant, pant, cough
. “Trust me, if anyone saw us leave we would be back in the hole by now.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”
Cough, cough
. “I’m going to die.”
Cough
. “How did you get out?”

“Someone cut me loose,” I said. “They brought my clothes and untied my bonds.”

“Cut you loose?” He straightened. “They
intentionally
set you free?”

“They must have. Yes, why else would they untie me?”

He stared back at the section of the jungle we’d fled. “Hmm.”

“So what do we do now?” I asked, gaining my breath.

He turned to me. “Eh? Not we.
You
. I can’t. I’d die before we reached the sea.”

I stared down into the dark valley, toward the lowlands. Moonlight glinted off patchwork swamp water miles distant. The screeches of a million creatures daring me to enter the black tangle of jungle sent shivers down my spine. Thoughts of trying to navigate the rivers alone filled me with dread. Surely I stood no better chance than he.

“Are you sure you can’t make it out?” I asked. “Whatever the risk, it would be better to die trying to escape than to die here.”

He scratched at his head and paced, considering the matter as if tormented by the choice set before him. What was I missing?

He made for a boulder to our right. “Just let me rest a second.”

I felt naked on that hill under a bright moon. “Are we safe here?”

“There is no safe place,” he said, waving his hand about. “We would have to get to the cliffs and get down to the swamps. Roughly ten miles that way.” He pointed westward. “The tidal surge reaches all the way in and reverses the flow of the river currents each day. Hundred miles in places. The alluvial coast makes one heck of a swamp…nothing but mud and mangroves for hundreds of square miles.” He was babbling. “I’m not sure if this is one of the Catalina tributaries that eventually meets the lower Balim River, or if we’re farther west. I’ve been trying to figure it out by the stars ever since I got here, but it’s near impossible without my glasses.”

“Slow down.” He was dumping details on me that might be invaluable. “You’re speaking too fast. How am I supposed to remember any of this?”

Michael stared at up me. I wrapped my arms around myself and paced in front of him, sure that at any moment the Warik would appear at the clearing’s edge. But he didn’t seem to share my concern, and I was desperate for more information about where I was, so I pressed him for more.

“Michael? Michael who?”

“Stevenson. I’m an anthropologist.”

“How did you get here?”

He spoke quickly. “I was on a trip to collect carvings and skulls. My boat was swamped by a tidal flood. I made it to shore but was stuck in all that mud by the river. They took me.”

“Where? Which river where you near?”

“The Eilanden. Along the Casuarina Coast in the Arafura Sea. They had a bag over my head most of the way and I was handed off twice but I’m pretty sure we traveled northwest.” He paused. “If you ever make it to the swamps, you’ll have to stuff your ears and nose with something when you sleep to keep the bugs out. That’s primarily why they use the head bags when they take slaves. When your hands are tied, you can’t swat them away.”

I knew then that there was no way I was going out alone.

“The rivers are a meandering maze of mud and silt, changing—”

“And I’m supposed to do this alone?” I said. “With cotton in my ears and nose?”

“I can’t go,” he answered without a missing a beat, shaking his head. “They would hunt me down.”

It was nearly hopeless—he caught in his own fear; I still frantic from my ordeal. So I drew deep breaths and tried to still my hammering heart.

A comment he’d made when he first stumbled out of his cell returned to me and I turned to him. “You asked if I’d finally come. If I was her. What did you mean?”

He studied my eyes, thinking. “I’m not sure. Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“I’ve been having dreams,” he said, voice so very quiet. “I was meant to come. So is she.”

Dreams? My mind was filled with the dream that had haunted me in Atlanta. But by now I was so loath to accept its validity that I rejected any serious consideration. If my captivity and Stephen’s death were party to that vision, it had come from hell.

And what if that was true? What if I had died on that white sailboat and was now paying for my failure as a daughter? Was God like my earthly father, capable of such torturous abandonment?

I shivered and shifted my stare. I think the final doorway to that dream closed then, with the terrible fear that I had been lured into hell, not figuratively, but literally. I simply could not hold that thought in mind without breaking down.

So I didn’t. I blocked it out.

“Whoever she is, it’s not me,” I said.

Michael gazed at me for a few long moments. “Don’t know.” He grinned, baring dirty teeth. “Just crazy dreams. I know that I was meant to find Tulim. This is my home now. Somehow my wanton mind calls for a woman.” He shrugged. “Not for me. For this valley. Something much bigger than me or you. And I’m not saying it’s you or anybody, for that matter. But I’ve learned some things.”

He sounded like he looked—unhooked.

I made a conscious decision then never to regard the absurd dream that had first persuaded me against good judgment to leave Atlanta. The foolishness of my naïveté angered me.

“What have you learned?” I asked.

He nodded, suddenly in his element, and I listened as Michael told me “some things.”